Chapter Text
The first thing Chrissy Cunningham does after she comes back to life is break up with her boyfriend.
Okay, so it’s not exactly the first thing she does, but it’s the first thing she does that matters. It’s the Thursday before spring break. The championship game is tomorrow. In another life—universe? timeline?—she died tomorrow. Seventeen and starving, seventeen and scared, seventeen and stuck—
She tells Jason they’re done over lunch, picking at the same salad her mom always packs her: iceberg lettuce, a few shaved carrots, maybe a bell pepper if she’s lucky. No dressing. She wants to be done. She wants a goddamn hamburger.
“That’s not funny, angel.”
“I’m not joking.”
He gapes at her. His posse is staring, Andy and Patrick and all the rest of them just as gobsmacked as he is. Bree and Mandy are looking at her like she’s lost her mind. Chrissy Cunningham doesn’t make a scene. She hangs on Jason’s arm, smiling like everything’s fine, and never complains. Her makeup is always perfect. Stomach always empty. She’s an ornament; a doll.
Not this time. Not anymore.
“Chrissy, what the hell’s going on? This isn’t like you, babe.”
Hell’s a good word for it.
“Don’t call me that,” she says. “And nothing’s going on. I just don’t want to date you anymore. I don’t—” She bites the rest of it back, but the truth of it makes her tremble.
I don’t think I ever did.
Rage starts to build on Jason’s face, twisting up his features until his expression matches the sort of person he really is: ugly and mean. Something in her chest constricts at the sight. She knew what he was like, caught glimpses of it all the time when she did something wrong—something he didn’t like—and his mask slipped, but she stayed with him anyway. Why did she stay?
The answer churns low in her stomach, surges up into her throat like bile. She shoves it down and tries to breathe through the urge to vomit.
“You don’t mean that,” he says, snapping her out of her thoughts. His voice is low and angry. It’s the kind of tone that would have scared her before.
It scares her now, but there are worse things in the world than Jason Carver. She knows that now.
“I’ll find my own ride home,” she tells him. Her hands shake as she picks up her lunch and walks away, but only a little. Before she even makes it to the door, the cafeteria is buzzing with gossip. A group of underclassmen stare at her in shock, totally unable to wrap their heads around the idea of dumping one of the most popular guys in school.
Cheeks burning, she does her best to ignore the whispers as she tosses her salad in the trash and hurries out into the hall. Her stomach is churning and her hands are still shaking, but she did it. She broke up with Jason.
There’s a vending machine down by the gym, on the way to her next class. She digs through her backpack for her wallet. She’ll grab a bag of chips or pretzels or something. If she eats it in class, slowly, so the teacher doesn’t notice, maybe she’ll finish the whole thing.
The thought makes her smile, a bright bubblegum grin that feels real in a way she isn’t used to. She probably looks like a crazy person, but she can’t make herself care. She broke up with Jason. She’s going to eat something other than that horrible salad, or try to, at least.
It’s a start.
.
(The first thing she does, the very first thing, is gasp and shudder and cry, caught up in memories of a death that isn’t hers anymore. She bites her fist, trying to stay quiet as sobs stick in her throat. Her bones ache. The song playing on the radio makes her want to scream.
The first thing she does is remember.)
.
She wakes up hungry.
There’s half an apple waiting for her on the kitchen counter, just like always, but today she forces herself to grab a granola bar to go with it, the chocolate kind they only ever have in the house because Jeremy loves them. Her mother’s frown follows her out the door, itching against her shoulder blades, but she just shoves the bar into the pocket of her sweater and thinks about the note instead.
She writes it in sparkly purple gel pen on a scrap of notebook paper and slips it into Eddie’s locker just the way she did before, but this time, the fizzing in her stomach is nervous excitement rather than fear.
Now she just has to wait.
It feels like the morning lasts forever. She suffers through the pep rally with a fake smile plastered firmly in place. It doesn’t falter even when Jason gives his speech, eyes boring into her as he talks. It’s as cringeworthy and fake as it was the first time around. His smile doesn’t slip either, but she can see right through it. He’s angry.
She heads for the door the instant the rally is over, ducking away before Jason can catch up with her. He’s got girls hanging all over him, crowding close as they clamor for his attention, but she knows he wants to talk. To fix this.
Maybe she was stupid enough to stay, but she knows better than to try and make him see that there’s nothing to fix.
People whisper and stare at her in the hallways, but she just keeps her head down and hurries to class. It all seems far away and unimportant. The only thing she can think about is whether or not Eddie remembers. She can’t be the only one who does, right? Chrissy hasn’t talked to any of the people she saw while she was trapped in the monster’s awful hive mind—Steve and Nancy and Robin and the gaggle of freshmen they were with—but she can’t be the only one with her memories intact.
The simplest answer is probably that she’s insane. Lost her mind, just like she was worried about, but she knows that’s not true. Knows it, and not just because believing that time has somehow reset itself is somehow easier than accepting that she’s nuts. If she lets herself, she can feel the ache of what happened to her. There are fault lines in her bones, places where she knows she snapped and twisted and broke. Her body remembers the trauma as vividly as her mind does.
She just doesn’t know if anyone else remembers.
She should have just taken her dad’s car and driven out to see Eddie last night, but she couldn’t make herself do it. She couldn’t stomach the thought of standing in the trailer where he watched her die without proof that she isn’t the only one who has all this— shit in her head. So instead, she’s waiting for fifth period when she can head out to the picnic table, hoping, desperately, that she isn’t wrong. That she isn’t the only one.
Statistics isn’t really her strong suit, but Eddie rattled off percentages easy as breathing. Maybe he can do the math for her. She clutches the thought close as she sits through history, through chem, through what is without a doubt the worst Spanish test she’s ever taken. Infinitives swim across the page in meaningless clusters: ser and estar, to be or to be, temporary or permanent. She’d laugh if she weren’t so anxious.
She slips out into the woods as soon as the bell rings for fifth period. It’s study hall, and Mr. Higgins never bothers to take attendance. She has to force herself not to hurry, not to run. It’s quiet. Leaves crunch under her sneakers.
There’s no clock. No spiders. Just Eddie, his voice soft enough to break her heart as he says her name.
“Chrissy?”
“Hi,” she says, suddenly tongue-tied. What if she’s wrong? “It’s me.”
His throat works. “Do you, uh, remember—” He stops. She can see the question in his eyes, pained and hesitant. Do you remember this? Do you remember dying?
There’s an answering lump in her throat. She never should have doubted him. “Yeah,” she manages, and then she’s wrapped up in a desperate hug. His arms are almost too tight, but she squeezes him back just as fiercely, breathing him in. He smells like weed and laundry detergent and teenage boy, and his heart is pounding in his chest, fast and loud, like he’s feeling everything she’s feeling, all the shock and relief and giddy, disbelieving joy.
You’re alive. We’re alive.
They stay like that for a long time. Too long, really, for how well they know each other outside of their memories, but she doesn’t care and Eddie doesn’t seem to either. When they finally pull away, she’s a mess, teary-eyed and sniffling. There’s a lip print on his Hellfire shirt—the muted pink she always wears on pep rally days because it doesn’t clash with the godawful orange and green cheer uniforms—and a thick black smudge of mascara.
“Sorry,” she says in a wobbly voice, cringing a little bit at how small she sounds. Jason always hated it when she cried.
“A little salt water never hurt anyone,” Eddie says, but his grin is as shaky as her voice. His hand comes up and then falls away in a nervous sort of twitch. “Besides, I’m—”
He cuts himself off, closing his eyes like it hurts to look at her.
“God, Chrissy, I’m the one who should be sorry. I am sorry. I’m so sorry I couldn’t save you.” His voice breaks, hoarse and raw, and she forgets all about her messy face and the makeup already smeared on his shirt. She has to hug him again. She can’t help it.
“It’s okay,” she says, muffled against his chest.
He just stands there for a minute, tense and shaking, but then his arms come around her, desperate and clinging, like he can’t help himself either.
“No, it’s not. I watched you die,” he says, miserable, shattered. “And then I ran.”
“You were the only one who noticed something was wrong. The only one who even tried to help.”
“Chrissy—”
“And I know you turned around.” She swallows, because she was dead. She shouldn’t know, but she does. “The thing that killed me, the monster, it— stole me, I guess. Stole my consciousness or something.” She doesn’t really have the words for it, but Eddie needs to know. “It was this huge hive mind, all these angry, alien things, and it could see everything. So I could see everything. I saw that girl, Max, and Steve Harrington, of all people? Nancy Wheeler, and another girl. Robin? I don’t know her last name, but I think she’s in band.”
Eddie’s heart is thundering in her ears again. His hand spasms against her back, but he doesn’t let go. She says the words into his chest, quiet, like a confession.
“I saw you turn around. You went back to buy them time.”
Eddie heaves out a shuddering breath, and then they’re sinking down onto the bench, still wrapped up in each other. He keeps an arm around her shoulders, holding her like she’ll vanish if he lets go, or he will.
“I guess we both saw some awful shit then,” he says softly.
“Yeah.”
He’s lean and rangy against her, but there’s a wiry strength to him she didn’t expect. His arm around her is comforting. Warm. The weight of it feels good. Better than good: it doesn’t feel constricting, just… grounding.
She can’t remember the last time she felt so safe.
Chrissy reaches for his free hand on impulse, drawing it into her lap and tracing over the heavy rings on his fingers. “A lot of bad stuff,” she agrees, “but the concert was pretty cool.”
That startles a rusty laugh out of him. “I didn’t figure you for a Metallica fan,” he says, but there’s something gentle in his tone. Teasing, but a little embarrassed at the same time.
Chrissy, this is for you.
“I don’t know,” she quips, trying to match that gentleness. “I thought it was awesome.” She grins. “Very metal.”
“Yeah?”
“Oh, absolutely. Almost as cool as Corroded Coffin.”
“High praise!” he shoots back, a smile pulling at the corner of his mouth. Most of the shadows are gone from his eyes. They’re warm and dark, and she can feel a blush start to stain her cheeks. She ducks her head, feeling silly even as she does it. She wants to keep looking at his smile. She wants him to keep looking at her like that.
The bell shrills in the distance before she has time to process that thought. Study hall is over. Eddie doesn’t move a muscle, but Chrissy panics a little bit. She doesn’t want him to go.
“Hey,” she blurts out. “Can we, um. Maybe meet up later? After the game?”
She has to squash the impulse to take back the question as soon as she’s asked it, to shrink her wants down until they’re nothing, but Eddie just curls his fingers around her, his grip warm and sure. The panic melts away.
“Any time, anywhere,” he promises. “You just say the word, Chrissy Cunningham.”
She’s tempted to say it right now, but she’s not quite daring enough to skip class. Not today, at least.
“I’ll hold you to that,” she says instead, and this time his smile doesn’t just linger at the corner of his mouth. It spreads wide and bright across his face, makes her heart stutter against her ribs.
“Looking forward to it, Your Majesty,” he says, bringing their hands up to his chest like he’s swearing a vow. She giggles, then winces when her fingers hit the tacky smear of lip gloss she left behind. She really did make a mess of his shirt.
“Sorry about the makeup.” She swipes futilely at the lip print, but he just laughs it off.
“It’s no big deal,” he says. “You, on the other hand…” He untangles their fingers and cups her cheek, thumb brushing over the delicate skin beneath her eye. “As much as I dig the vibe, I’m guessing you don’t want to head back to class looking like a punk rock raccoon.”
She has a little kit in her backpack. Tissues, makeup remover, a tube of emergency concealer. She could duck into the bathroom and take care of this herself, but instead, she stays right where she is and lets Eddie smooth away the mess. His touch is unbearably gentle, and she can feel herself leaning into it, drinking it in, like a flower following the sun.
Chrissy is late to sixth period. Her calc teacher frowns at her and tells her to stay behind to discuss the pop quiz she just missed, but she’s too happy to care. Her thoughts are full of Eddie, heart still fluttering, cheeks still red.
She really should be paying attention to the lesson, but calculus is the last thing on her mind, and besides, it’s the last class before break. No one is actually paying attention, so she gives herself permission to daydream.
Eddie didn’t take too long to clean up after his campaign last time, and her parents won’t expect her home too early after a big game like this, especially since they don’t know she’s broken up with Jason. No monster, no school, no curfew: they’ll have hours.
She can’t wait.
.
(When she gets a look at her calc notes as she’s flipping to a clean page for her next class, she has to stifle a giddy laugh. She’s drawn sunflowers blooming between half-done derivatives and abandoned functions, bold and riotous and utterly absurd.
She’ll have to get the actual notes from someone after break, but for now she just traces the sweeping lines of the tallest flower and thinks about Eddie Munson like she’s back in middle school. She couldn’t make out all the lyrics through the noise, but she can still picture him up there on stage, nervous and determined and proud of his band. She was a little bit dazzled by the eighth grader who stood so tall and played his music so loudly she could feel it in her bones.
She thinks maybe she still is.)
.
Lucas Sinclair comes off the bench and drains the buzzerbeater like it’s nothing. It’s as impressive the second time as it was the first.
She cheers for all she’s worth, but still, she’s more excited to meet up with Eddie again than she is about the win. She’s seen it before, after all, and high school basketball doesn’t seem all that important in the face of monsters and time travel and the boy who tried to help her.
She slips away from the celebration as soon as she can, stowing her pom poms and touching up her makeup before she heads out to the parking lot to wait for Eddie. He doesn’t make her wait long. He bursts out of the building with a box in his arms, a pair of babbling freshmen trailing along in his wake.
“You can’t just take off,” the one with the hat is saying. Dustin, she thinks. “We have to debrief! And besi—” He cuts himself off mid-word when he sees her. “Oh.”
She’s never met Dustin before, but she remembers him limping frantically toward Eddie, crying when he couldn’t save him. Chrissy’s not really sure what the protocol is for a situation like this, but it feels rude to ignore him. She gives him a little wave. He stares at her for a moment, then waves back so aggressively it seems like he’s about to fall over.
Greeting complete, he turns back to Eddie. “Ahhh, I see how it is,” he says gleefully, smiling so wide his cheeks scrunch up.
Eddie elbows him as best he can with the box still in his arms. “You see nothing. There is absolutely nothing to see.”
“No, no, I definitely see it. In retrospect, this is all very obvious. And,” he continues, undaunted even as Eddie takes another shot at him, “I’ll allow it. On one condition!”
“Condition?” Eddie squawks. “No way, little sheep, you are not setting conditions of any kind, you are not allowing anything—”
“Donuts and debrief tomorrow morning. First thing!”
Chrissy smothers a laugh behind her hand as Eddie rolls his eyes. He stows the box in the van and turns to face Dustin like they’re in some kind of Western showdown.
“Look, pipsqueak,” Eddie starts, but Dustin cuts him off.
“First thing, Munson! The last time you took off—” He stops, glancing over at Chrissy, eyes searching. Wondering what she knows, probably. Dustin swallows as he turns back to Eddie, blinking rapidly, like he’s trying not to cry. “It sucked, okay?”
Eddie looks a little stunned at that, like he didn’t expect anyone to be cut up about what happened to him. Not even Dustin, who sobbed over him as he died. The thought makes her chest ache. He recovers quickly enough though, open affection blooming on his face.
“Aw, Henderson. You’re guilting me,” he grins. “But I’ll allow it. However, you’re out of your freakishly smart mind if you think I’m gonna wake up early tomorrow. It’s spring break, dude. The end of the world couldn’t stop me from sleeping in.”
“Not funny,” Dustin mutters, peevish, but it’s immediately undermined by the way he rockets forward and hugs Eddie, clinging tight.
Eddie hugs him back without hesitation, ignoring the other freshman, who huffs and rolls his eyes. “Donuts and debrief,” he says. “I promise. Now scram.”
The kid hangs on until Eddie starts giving him what looks like a mostly halfhearted noogie. Dustin swats at him. “Not the hair, Eddie, oh my god!”
“You have a hat on, it’s fine. Now seriously, get lost. Go celebrate or something.”
“It’s the principle of the thing,” Dustin says. “And fine.” His gaze darts from Eddie to Chrissy, and then his expression turns sly. “Have fun on your date.”
He books it as Eddie makes an outraged noise, pulling his gangly friend along with him as he goes. The crowd from the game is already gone. It’s just Eddie and Chrissy alone under the sodium lights.
“Sorry about him,” Eddie sighs. “Dustin’s a little shithead sometimes.”
Despite the complaint, his fondness for the kid is written all over his face. It’s sweet.
“But he’s your favorite,” Chrissy says, and Eddie heaves another sigh.
“He is in fact my favorite. It’s terrible.”
“The worst,” she says solemnly, just to see if he’ll laugh. He does, and it’s the best thing she’s heard since he said her name in the woods. The sound melts into her chest, as bright as sunshine, warming her from the inside out.
He slouches back against the van with her and nudges one of her sneakers with the toe of his heavy boot. “You’re not gonna cut me any slack are you, Cunningham?”
With Jason, the words would be pointed, sharp and nasty, designed to make her shrivel up and behave.
Eddie makes it sound like a good thing.
“Nope,” she says, testing her theory, and he laughs again. God, she wants to keep making him laugh.
“Okay, okay! No rest for the wicked, I see. Where to?”
She curls her hands into the sleeves of her sweater, screwing up her courage. It’s easier than she thought it would be.
“I was thinking McDonald’s? I really want some fries.”
What she really wants is a hamburger, but she knows she’ll just purge later if she tries to eat one. But Eddie will be there, and McDonald’s fries are the best. She can manage fries.
Eddie bows, silly and dramatic. “Then some fries you shall have.”
The smell of grease and salt makes her mouth water as soon as they step inside. It’s been ages since she had any kind of fast food. It always makes her feel heavy, guilty and sick, but she’s so tired of feeling like that. She wants to be better. She wants to try.
They take over one of the back booths, hidden away in a corner, and Eddie immediately shocks her by dipping a fry into his shake.
He catches her staring, her own fries forgotten for the moment. “Chrissy Cunningham, are you telling me that you’ve never experienced the nirvana that is a milkshake fry? Is that what I’m getting from your face right now?”
“I haven’t,” she says, giggling when he lets out a theatrical gasp. “No, I swear! Is it really that good?”
“Is it— is it really that good?” He makes a disbelieving noise. “I am shocked,” he says, “I am appalled—”
Chrissy pops a fry into her mouth to try and hide her smile. She doesn’t do a very good job of it, judging by the way Eddie is grinning, but that’s okay. The fry is hot and salty and perfect. She savors the taste almost as much as she does Eddie’s antics.
“Seriously, I am like eighty percent sure this is what heaven tastes like. Maybe eighty-five percent.” He swirls another fry around in his shake and hums thoughtfully while he chews. “Yeah, okay, definitely eighty-five.”
“So heaven tastes like chocolate and salt?” she says, mostly to tease, but she’s curious. She hasn’t had a milkshake in years—they’re nothing but empty calories—and even when she still let herself indulge, she never thought to dunk a fry in one.
“See for yourself, Cunningham.” He gestures grandly at his shake, eyes sparkling. “If you dare.”
She pushes her sleeves up and reaches across the table before she can second guess herself. Dips, swirls, bites. She’s blushing again, cheeks gone red as Eddie watches her.
“Verdict?” he asks, voice just the slightest bit hoarse. “Tastes like heaven, right?”
He’s not wrong. It is good: salty and sweet and unexpectedly delicious. Still…
“I don’t know,” she says. “I might have to try another one to be sure.”
Chrissy’s expecting a dramatic outburst, maybe some flailing, but instead he just pats the stretch of booth beside him. “Get over here, then,” he says, beaming. “We’ll share.”
It feels a little bit like the picnic table, but better. There’s no grief, no ugly memories, just the bright fluorescents and the tinny music drifting through the mostly empty restaurant.
She finishes her fries like that, tucked against Eddie’s side, dipping some of them into his shake and eating some just plain. She doesn’t want to risk ketchup while she’s wearing her white sweater. She doesn’t want to move an inch.
“So,” Eddie says eventually, after the food is gone and she’s declined his offer of the last sip of his milkshake. “About what Dustin said.”
“The date?” she asks.
“Oh. Uh, no,” he says, and this time he’s the one blushing. “Well, yes— okay, you know what? We’ll come back to that. The debrief he was talking about, is what I meant.” He looks down at her, mouth curving into a frown. “I think maybe you should tag along. You deserve to know about this shit, if you want to.”
There’s a part of her that doesn’t want to know, that just wants to stay in this little bubble with Eddie and move forward without looking too closely at the mechanics of this second chance, but that feels too much like cowardice. She’s sick of being hungry and small and scared. She can handle donuts with Eddie and Dustin.
“Yeah,” she says quietly, proud that her voice only shakes a little bit. “I’ll go.”
“Okay.” He pauses, gaze dropping away. He fiddles with his rings for a minute before he looks back up at her. She gets the sense that he’s trying to work up his courage just like she was. “Do you want me to pick you up? Tomorrow, obviously, since you are in fact sitting next to me right now, and it’s hard to pick someone up when they’re sitting down.”
“Both very accurate observations,” she says, softening the teasing by tangling her fingers with his. “I’d like that.”
“Well then,” he says, laughing a little bit. “I’d say it’s a date, but, you know. Dustin.”
He’s blushing again, and he tastes like chocolate and salt when she leans up to kiss him. Eddie is still for a moment, and then his mouth opens beneath hers and his hand comes up to cradle her cheek.
They’re in a sticky McDonald’s booth at quarter past ten in Hawkins, Indiana, and it’s the best kiss she’s ever had.
“That’s alright,” she says when she can make herself pull away. She wants to kiss him again. She wants to keep kissing him. He sways toward her, and she thinks he feels the same way. “This one’s been pretty great.”
.
(He parks a few blocks down when he drops her off at her house. “I’ll pick you up here, too,” he says, smoothing a thumb across her lips when she frowns. “Last thing I wanna do is cause any trouble for you.”
“You’re not trouble,” she argues, but he just kisses her again, soft and lingering, and shoos her out of the van. She goes, but she files the rueful look on his face away for later. She wants him to believe her.
She wants a lot of things, she’s finding out.
Chrissy crawls into bed and burrows beneath the covers, falls asleep thinking about monsters and heroes and second chances.
She doesn’t dream.)