#ebongawk ask

He'd sold Chrissy Cunningham weed two weeks ago.

There was some big ball-fondler-slash-cheerleader camping trip planned over a weekend at the beginning of March, so a number of cute girls in tight clothes came to him at his designated dealing spot, trying to act all coquettish to get a discount outta him.

It wasn't the first time. Certainly wouldn't be the last. And he wasn't weak enough to fall for it.

Usually.

Then Chrissy left him a note, and her actual, sincere interest in just talking to him had him handing her an ounce for basically pocket change. And, alright, sue him, maybe it had something to do with the fact that it was Chrissy Cunningham. He wasn't about to psychoanalyze himself to figure out why the queen of Hawkins High was more worthy than any other green-clad miniskirt, however.

(It was 'cause he, y'know, liked her, but fuck him if he ever admitted that bullshit aloud.)

What surprised him most was how unusual Chrissy's ask was. In all the years they'd shared within Hawkins borders, she had never once reached out with hope of obtaining some under-the-counter pharmaceuticals. And, even as he'd thrown himself in the dirt just to make her laugh and offered her a price that would barely put him in the green for her sale, he figured this was a one-and-done deal.

So, lo and behold, a mere thirteen-and-a-half days later, as they were steamrolling their way toward spring break, another pink slip of paper fluttered out from between the slats of his locker with handwriting he couldn't admit he recognized. To say he was shocked would be an understatement.

And now, here they were. Sitting across from one another. Eddie preparing to offer her yet another steal of a price on Mary Jane, only to be told that Chrissy potentially wanted to dip her toes into something even more illicit.

"Uh," Eddie said, speaking before he could take a half-second to think about her request. "I think I have some Special K back--"

"Can I try that?" she asked, clearly without understanding or caring what Special K even was. She looked at him, chin tilted down so the blue of her eyes was disrupted by long, dark lashes. "Please?"

"I-I mean," he stammered, extremely suavely, thank you very much, "I dunno, Cunningham. It's not, y'know, for the faint of heart. Or newbies to the genre, like one such as yourself seems to be."

Drumming his knuckles on the tabletop, he tilted his head as he took her in. Having hardly had a chance to even greet her before she asked him for capital D-Drugs, he hadn't really had an opportunity to actually look at her.

She looked... not so great.

Thin. Weary. Atlas, weighed down by the earth on her narrow shoulders.

The thing with Chrissy was that she always kinda sparkled. Like, full-on glitter and stardust with every smile she tossed carelessly in any given direction.

Sometimes at him. Typically not.

Even though there was always something there, just beneath the surface - some unidentifiable strain around her eyes, some sadness in the twist of her lips when she thought no one was looking - she always managed to shine like she'd climbed out of her mother's womb and stepped directly into the sun's most favored ray.

That glow was entirely absent right now. As bare as the branches swaying above them had been just a couple months ago. So desolate and broken, it was hard to tell if there was anything salvageable in the decay. Any green hidden beneath the muted bark now swaddled around her.

"Please?" she asked again, though her shoulders deflated a little in her plea. Like she was expecting him to tell her no. Preparing herself for the disappointment.

And, alright, listen: Eddie was a lot of things, yeah? But a purveyor of dissatisfaction he was not.

Not with her.

"It's not here," he replied, as gently as he could. "But, uh. I could-- After Hellfire, I could run home, I guess, or bring it to you tomorrow--"

"Can we just go get it?" she asked, once again shocking him with her question. Rolling her lips, she squeezed her eyes shut and took a deep, shuddering breath. "After, um. After your club, a-and the game, we could get it together. I can-- I don't want to go to the stupid afterparty anyway." Her voice cracked when she said, "Please, Eddie?"

It was the way she said his fucking name that did him in.

Later that evening, after the rest of the crowd had cleared out, Chrissy approached his van with slow, careful steps. Like she'd trip on a pebble and keel over.

Her shoulders, already drooping with the weight of the world, somehow seemed further burdened. Even her peppy little ponytail didn't bob with the same gusto as normal.

Holding open the passenger door for her had Chrissy awarding him a tired smile. Absolutely bare of emotion. Not a glimmer to be seen.

Jogging around to the driver's side, Eddie started up the beast that was his van and pulled out of the parking lot. Driving, y'know, like a normal human being for once. Even the stereo, by design, was at a reasonable volume.

He'd gotten to his parking spot a few minutes early for a reason, okay?

A few minutes of driving in basic silence was enough to have him on the verge of tearing his own hair out, however.

"Are you alright, Chrissy?" he asked, still trying to keep his voice even. Indoor voice. "Not to, like, overstep or anything, and tell me to go fuck myself immediately if I am, but you kinda seem like you haven't slept. Or something."

That was safe, right? It wasn't gonna make her feel like he was telling her she looked like shit? Because she didn't. Ever. She just looked exhausted.

For a beat, she said nothing. Just dead silence. Eddie was about to retract the entire sentence - fucking hoover it straight back into this throat and swallow down the words until they'd never been spoken aloud in the first place.

Then, her next breath hitched on a sob, and Eddie almost drove into the goddamn shoulder.

"Uh--"

"I-I'm sorry," she sobbed, and it took Eddie a second to realize she was apologizing for crying. "I-I don't-- I don't--"

"Whoa, hey, it's alright," he interrupted before she could finish her stuttered sentence. Which, for some reason, just made her cry even harder. Eddie balked, trying to figure out what the hell he was supposed to do with a passenger seat full of crying cheerleader. This had happened approximately zero times in the past, so it wasn't like he was pulling from experience. Plus, Munsons weren't exactly known for their hospitality.

All he could think to do was rest his hand on her shoulder. Fingers curved around the small round, feeling the jut of her collar beneath. He squeezed, feeling the way she shook, and had to grit his teeth to not retract his hand.

Wishing, not for the first time, that there was a magic encyclopedia in his brain where he could search up something like, what to do when girl crying and get some divine response.

Yet, to his mounting surprise, she actually leaned into his hand.

She leaned into his hand.

Like he was holding her. Like he was a source of comfort.

What the fuck?

They pulled in front of his house a few minutes later, just as her sobs began to quiet into little skips of breath, and neither of them made any move to exit the van.

Admittedly, Eddie was kinda waiting for Chrissy to move first. To shrug herself out from under his palm, or shift like she was reaching for the door handle. She didn't, so Eddie kept still.

A monumental feat, given how his energy buzzed just beneath the surface of his skin. Stemming from where his hand rested on her shoulder.

Except he had to pull his hand away. To put the van in park and turn it off. So he did both of those things, and still, she didn't move.

"So, uh--"

"Jason cheated on me during the camping trip."

What?

"What?" Eddie asked aloud, blindsided by this sudden information. And, Jesus, her voice sounded so goddamn small when she said it. So fucking disconnected.

"I didn't--" Shaking her head, she let out a long, slow breath. "I didn't even get to smoke the weed you sold me. I was-- I'd never tried it, you know? And I was nervous, because Jason doesn't like getting high. He says it's disgusting, but I guess drinking until you black out is okay? I hate drinking, though, so I wanted to try weed. And Jason told me he wouldn't be able to kiss me if I smoked. I didn't-- I just thought he meant, like, that night, right? So Abby - one of my teammates - taught me how to roll a joint, and I was so excited, but I couldn't--I couldn't actually bring myself to light it. I got too scared."

She paused, pulling her knees up to her chest. Curling up like she could make herself smaller. Like the weight of her admittances was swallowing her whole.

"So I trudged back to camp, tail between my legs," she sighed, "and Jason was there. Making out with Stephy Stevenson. Right in front of everyone."

"What the actual fuck?" Eddie could come up with nothing useful to say.

"Yeah," she laughed, her voice devoid of any humor. "I just, um. I lost it, Eddie. I started screaming, and I grabbed my bag, and I left. And now, everyone on the basketball team and half of the cheer squad is making it seem like I'm the crazy one. Like I'm--like I'm damaged or something, and I--" Her eyes welled again, and she squeezed them shut as though to trap the tears in her ducts.

It didn't work.

"I am tired," she admitted, her voice breaking. "And I just-- I just want to sleep, Eddie. God, I just want to sleep until I forget who I am and what's waiting for me back home, because, of course, even my mom thinks I'm insane for breaking up with Jason Carver, like I committed some cardinal sin, and--"

"Hey, uh," he interrupted her tirade, which had her taking in a deep, shaky breath that almost seemed relieved. "Look, I'm not giving you any Special K tonight, peach, got it?"

Her eyes, shiny with tears, popped open and stared at him in wide-eyed terror.

"But," he continued before she could protest, "I am, in fact, the best person to come to with sleep issues."

Her lower lip warbled, brows pulling together with her upset as she let out a choked, "Really?"

"Hell yeah, toots," Eddie said, trying his absolute best to lift her mood. "Ain't nothing a joint, a pepperoni pizza, and a pointless movie can't cure. Might even help with that stupid broken heart you're dealing with. Who knows?"

He shouldered his door open, practically sprinting around the front of the van to get to hers before she could exit herself. She took his hand gratefully when he offered, holding to his arm as they trudged up the few steps and he let her into the trailer first.

The pizza was ordered. Eddie plopped down on the couch beside her, watching her watch him as he rolled a joint. Lighter sparked, he looked at her, seeing the hesitance in her eyes.

"Hey," he said, pulling her gaze away from the joint and onto his face. "You trust me?"

She blinked, and he woulda swore she took in a breath like a gasp. Eyes wide, there was the briefest pause before she admitted, "Yes."

And, Christ, Eddie would have swore some of her sparkle came back when she said it.

She fell asleep in his bed that night.

Eddie, completely unintentionally, fell asleep next to her.

(And, somehow, perhaps by the divine intervention that Eddie did not believe in? Over the next few months, and all through the summer, they slept like that more often than not. And Chrissy swore, every goddamn time, that it was the best she'd ever slept.)

It was weird how they'd stumbled into each other again, both apparently running in the same circles now that they'd left Hawkins behind. Weird how they kept gravitating toward one another with nothing but glances and smiles. Recognition obvious in their shared gazes but unsure how to approach the bridge that connected them.

Two wayward souls, stuck on either side of a rickety railing, waiting to see who might take a chance and cross first.

Chrissy had tried to do everything right. Well, right by her mother's standards, anyway. She'd enrolled in Indiana State, following Jason's allegedly promising baseball scholarships and setting her own dreams aside, never allowing herself to wonder if they'd come to pass. If she'd even be given the tools necessary to realize them in the first place. If she was allowed such freedom.

But Jason hadn't done well in college. Without his dad standing over his shoulder, telling Jason he needed to be better every day, the freedom to simply be had overtaken his life. He'd rushed a fraternity, discovered the party lifestyle, and had dumped Chrissy halfway through second semester because dating his high school sweetheart was apparently a bad look among his frat brothers.

Chrissy hadn't told her mother, of course. Even the potential of Laura's ire, in knowing that Chrissy was found so lacking she couldn't keep Jason Carver entertained, was more than enough to keep her mouth shut during her rare visits home. She'd instead silently licked her wounds, finishing out her freshman year at IU, then put in a transfer request to Philadelphia.

As far as she knew, Laura still didn't know where she was.

It was better that way.

She'd made quick friends with a girl in her economics class, Abby, who'd offered her a place to stay when the semester finished out and Chrissy mentioned, less casually than she would have liked, that she had nowhere to go for the holidays. Abby lived with another girl Chrissy had befriended named Felicia, and was also dating-but-denying-it a really nice boy named Gareth. Who happened to be living with a guy Chrissy knew immediately.

Eddie Munson.

She'd been so shocked the first time she saw him, she hadn't said anything. Had simply turned around and left the apartment. Which was inconvenient, considering she was supposed to be staying there for the holidays.

Now, nearly two months later and though they'd still hardly exchanged more than a handful of words, Chrissy climbed through the back window and out onto the fire escape to share space with him. Willingly sitting beside the alleged mean and scary drug dealer from her high school.

It all seemed so silly now. So trivial.

"Cunningham," he greeted, taking a final puff from his dying cigarette before flicking the butt into the wet alleyway below. It was cold. February in Philadelphia could be bitter, though, so that this cold existed in a stillness uninterrupted by a breeze made it seem almost balmy.

"Eddie," she said in turn, letting her legs dangle over the metal railing. Watching the trajectory of his cigarette as it flew into the alley. "Were you heading in?"

He looked at her, a curious quirk to his brow. She looked right back, curling a little further into her sweater.

"Nah, not yet," he answered after a moment. Looking up toward the overcast sky as though he could pierce the clouds with his gaze and find the stars beneath. "Could use with a little break from the noise."

"Yeah, me too." She hummed, resting her arms against the bar that protected people from toppling down the fire escape and setting her chin atop them. "I'm surprised you need a break, though."

Eddie snorted. "Yeah? What's that supposed to mean, Cheer Queen?"

"I'm not a cheerleader anymore, Eddie."

"So?" She could feel his eyes on her, his gaze was so intense. It was no wonder she had such a hard time looking at him in high school. How was she meant to survive being caught in his eye when there were so few distractions in their small town peers? "You'll always be a cheer queen to me, Chrissy." Pausing, he grunted. "Also, I believe that's called answer avoidment or something."

Chrissy giggled. "I don't think avoidment is a word."

"And yet you understand my meaning! Ergo, it's close enough to a word that the lack of official definition is irrelevant."

Rolling her face until she was meeting his eye, Chrissy couldn't help but smile. Her lips splitting apart with a grin that only accentuated his own. As she did, something in his eyes softened, just a little. He mirrored her position, resting his head on his arms and kicking his legs back and forth for effect. Making her giggle again.

"C'mon, Cunningham. If you're gonna insult me, at least be upfront about it."

"It wasn't an insult!" she insisted with a laugh. "I just meant that, um. I mean, you were always, you know, somewhat boisterous, back in the day. I'm surprised noise bothers you, is all."

Eddie chuckled, rolling his eyes.

"'Boisterous', huh?"

"I don't mean it to sound rude!"

"Nah, no, I know what you meant," he assured her, letting his gaze fall back over the alley. Releasing her from its confines, both to her relief and detriment. Shrugging, he let out an exasperated breath. "It's funny, y'know? I spent, what, twenty years in that hellhole? Making sure I left my goddamn mark. I was gonna make those small-minded fucks remember me, whether they wanted to or not. Being boisterous, as you so kindly say, was pretty much the only way I could do it."

They were sitting close enough that, when he swayed a little, likely moving to the rhythm of some song no one else could hear, his jacket brushed ever so slightly against her sweater.

"You definitely left a mark," she said after a moment.

"Yeah?"

"Your club? Hellfire? My brother ended up joining last year, when he got into high school. Some of your former, um, cattle or whatever, took him under their wing. It was--- I mean, it was really great for him. My mom, though, about blew a gasket." Shaking her head, Chrissy rolled her eyes. "It was the Satan club, started by known Satanist Eddie Munson. You hadn't been around for a year and your legacy lived on."

Eddie was quiet for a few seconds that stretched into entire lifetimes. A tenseness hung there, filling up the space between them, though Chrissy couldn't gauge why. All she had done was admit something that was common Hawkins knowledge, after all.

"They were sheep, Cunningham. Not cattle."

The tension snapped, and suddenly, she and Eddie were both laughing. Full-bellied delight that echoed against the brick buildings bordering the dark alley, both of them hunched over and staring at each other through eyes wet with mirth.

"Are you serious, though?" he asked between bouts of cackling. "The Satan club?"

"I swear," she assured him, still laughing. "Gosh, my mom was furious. But Matty--my brother--he refused to quit. Said it was cool. That he hated baseball, the sport he'd been playing for a good eight years, and liked Dungeons & Dragons, and she couldn't do anything about it."

"Hell yeah!" Eddie cheered, clapping his hands roughly together a few times. "Your brother is a fucking legend, Chrissy!"

"Yeah," she sighed, their shared laughter tapering off. Until the quiet again settled between them, only disrupted by the deep bass at their backs still beating through the window of the apartment they'd both vacated. "I miss him."

"Oh, shit. Is he, like--- Fuck, I mean, is he, y'know. Uh." Eddie grimaced, clenching his teeth and pulling his collar out. Chrissy blinked at him, his meaning taking a moment to click.

"Oh, no, no!" she assured him quickly, laughing despite herself. "No, he's--- I just, um, haven't gotten to talk to him in a while."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. I haven't been home."

Something in Eddie's expression fell with understanding, and he nodded. Taking a deep, slow breath, he shifted, turning his body until he was facing her, one leg propped up to rest his arm against.

"Yeah, me either," Eddie admitted. "Probably not for, y'know, the same reasons, but I did promise myself I'd never go back to that shithole, so. Same boat, I guess, just different cabins."

Chrissy nodded, as well, giving him a small smile. At the same moment, a light breeze made itself known, caressing what little skin was exposed beneath her sweater and making her shiver.

Eddie noticed. It was surprising that he did, yet she also couldn't explain why it was surprising. Why it felt like it shouldn't have been surprising.

"Hey, let's go back in," he suggested as he shrugged his way out of his leather jacket. Laying it over her shoulders to give her a buffer against the few seconds of February air it would take them to crawl back through the window. Chrissy took in a shaky breath, pulling the jacket tighter around herself and basking in its warmth. She hadn't even asked. Wouldn't have asked. And he just did it. "Dunno about you, but, uh, I'm ready to rejoin the fray."

It took her a moment to nod. To shift her weight until she was crouched, turning back toward the window, as she was closest.

Before she could get it open, Eddie caught her hand. They both gasped, and Chrissy looked at him, finding that his own eyes were captured by the curl of his fingers around hers. As though shocked he'd touched her so casually. Like it hadn't been a conscious movement.

There had been something in that touch. Something inexplicable. Something new. Something she was certain she'd hallucinated.

"Or," he began, his voice cracking. As though, whatever it was she'd hallucinated had in fact been a shared hallucination. Stronger, more sure, yet with his eyes still on their hands, he tried again. "Or."

"Or...?" Chrissy prompted when he didn't speak again.

"We could, uh, get outta here?" he suggested. Blinking, waving his spare hand awkwardly through the air, "Not, y'know, like that, or anything, Cheer Queen, just, uh. There's this diner a few blocks away with a killer milkshake. And, uh, I guess I'm just surprised. You're, y'know, way easier to talk to than I expected, given your former status as the queen of Hawkins High."

Despite herself, Chrissy giggled. Twisting her fingers until they were laced with his, her knuckles to his palm, and she could briefly squeeze his hand.

"Yeah?" she asked, bottom lip caught between her teeth for a moment. Eddie's eyes tracked the anxious habit, something in his face making her cheeks warm. "You're done avoiding me at these parties, then?"

"Well, can you blame me?" he asked, using his free hand to wedge the window open for her. "You're Chrissy Cunningham. I thought you were gonna be mean and scary!"

"Me?" She couldn't have kept the delight out of her voice if she'd tried.

"Hell yeah, you!" He laughed, gesturing for her to enter the apartment first. Chrissy climbed through, having to let go of his hand to pull her body through the opening. After some awkward finagling, Eddie finally followed.

It was a relief, when his hand found hers again after the separation.

"And what's the consensus?" she asked as they moved through the throng of people. "Am I living up to your expectations?"

Eddie let out a bark of laughter. Pulling open the door of the apartment and allowing her out first. It made something small and excited unfurl in her chest. Something so oddly hopeful, her breath caught against it in her lungs.

"Oh, sweetness," he said, shaking his head, "jury's still way out on that one."

She didn't give him back his jacket.

Like a dog that had just heard a command, Chrissy's head whipped up. So fast she nearly spilled her untouched glass of punch on the hotel ballroom floor.

It was the ten-year class of '86 reunion. There were more people attending than Chrissy had assumed might, given how many of Chrissy's fellow classmates hung around Hawkins and still saw each other often. Why attend a reunion when you could just go to any of the local bars and see a dozen Hawkins High alumni on a random Tuesday night?

Chrissy would know. She had the unfortunate luck of being one of those stuck.

Nancy Wheeler, on the other hand, had made the choice to come all the way from New York. This was more because her younger sister, Holly, was graduating high school, and the reunion just happened to line up with Nancy's schedule. She and Chrissy had talked on the phone at length about whether Nancy would actually attend.

"Jonathan has a photoshoot that weekend with the magazine, so he's flying out on Monday," Nancy had sighed the weekend prior, making the radio waves between her and Chrissy crackle. "I don't know if I want to face all those two-faced busybodies alone."

"You won't be alone," Chrissy argued. "You'll have me."

"I don't know why you're going, Chrissy. Truly. Why subject yourself to the torture?"

Chrissy had remained quiet at the time, an explanation teasing along the back of her throat. Words that tasted like a secret when she swallowed them back down.

Logistically, the idea of attending a reunion with a bunch of Hawkins residents that spurned and despised her was the antithesis of keeping her personal peace, which was a thing Chrissy had been working very hard on doing since her marriage blew up.

It was such an overplayed story that, while it was happening, Chrissy kept expecting movie cameras to pop out of the bushes and let her in on the cinematically dramatic unraveling that was her life. She could truly have been any actress in Hollywood playing the role of a scorned spouse. A high school sweetheart love story turned toxic when the wife discovered a pair of panties in her husband's car that clearly did not belong to her. A horribly theatric and entirely too public divorce. Rumors about Chrissy's alleged infidelity that no one could prove but everyone believed all the same.

Jason Carver, ten years later, remained the golden boy of Hawkins, Indiana. A title of which Chrissy now understood the insignificance.

It had taken a few years, but now, she was relieved she no longer had that spotlight following her through town. Though Chrissy lost many of those she thought were friends, the few that remained were impossibly tightknit and the very best support system she could possibly have.

Nancy, of course, who was currently trying very hard to mask her shock at Eddie's sudden appearance. Barb, who was not attempting to mask her surprise, standing beside Nancy. Robin, who had brought Steve as her date despite the fact that her wife and Chrissy's other good friend, Vickie, was also in attendance. All three of them immediately approached Eddie, careless for his status.

And the entire reason Chrissy had bothered showing up tonight.

Eddie.

Though it wasn't at all Eddie's fault her marriage had fallen apart some years back, he had been the catalyst for Jason's lightbulb development of Chrissy's apparent cheating. Because Chrissy had found the panties, and her first instinct hadn't been to confront Jason.

It had been to call Eddie.

Her best friend, despite only truly getting to know one another at the tail end of their senior year. He'd gone to Chicago when she'd gone to Indiana State, and they managed to see each other on weekends that Jason decided to drive home to see his family, which was most. Chrissy usually managed to beg off with needing to study, and Jason used to pat her head like a puppy and tell her how studious she was.

Then, the band found a label that wanted to promote them, and Chrissy got engaged, and their friendship became more phone calls and letters than in-person hangouts.

Chrissy was pretty sure she fell in love with Eddie Munson well before she started planning her wedding, though she couldn't admit it to herself. Amidst all of their handwritten correspondence and hours-long conversations, the drives he made when he was close enough to swing by, and the safety she felt during the brief hugs they shared, the idea of marrying Jason was something she'd simply resigned herself to.

Which was why she called Eddie when it fell apart.

No one else would understand when she burst into tears. From anger and upset and betrayal, yes, of course, but also from relief.

Jason had demanded, mere hours after they'd vowed themselves to one another for the rest of their lives, that Chrissy cut Eddie out of her life completely. She'd refused, and it had always been a point of contention in their marriage. So, when he cheated, and then came home to find her sobbing on the phone to the man Jason felt threatened by, he pointed his finger at her for the rest of Hawkins to see.

Though he never explicitly said it was Eddie with whom Chrissy had this affair. Admitting that would mean admitting that Chrissy had reached well beyond Jason, into rockstar territory, and succeeded.

Still. She hadn't actually expected him to show up. Even though she really, really hoped he would.

"How funny would it be?" he asked the previous weekend. The band was on break, having just recorded their fourth album, in preparation for its release and the subsequent tour. "If I showed up unannounced to dozens of flapping jaws. God. Everyone who wanted to scrape me outta that school like gum off their shoes would be clamoring for an autograph. And I'd get to tell them to go fuck themselves."

"Just for me?"

"Everything for you, sweetness," he'd responded without hesitation. "Not just anything. Everything."

After her catastrophic divorce, Chrissy and Eddie had kinda sorta been dating. Secretly. For over a year now.

Every time Chrissy traveled, it was to see Eddie, though she hadn't told any of her friends that. They all assumed she was seeing the world outside of Hawkins because Jason had kept her so confined, hardly leaving Indiana. Even their honeymoon had been to Indianapolis.

Their honeymoon.

The intent of the secret had been to keep her name out of Eddie's limelight until they could navigate it properly. He was watched, always, and the prospect of dragging her through all that bullshit, as he inferred, seemed outrageous to him.

"You like quiet," he'd stated. "Shit won't be quiet again for a while if we go public."

"I don't care about quiet, Eddie," she'd argued back. "I care about you."

During his last secret trip to Hawkins, three months prior, Eddie had asked her to move in with him. To his home in New York City. Chrissy cried from sheer joy when she said yes.

Crashing the reunion had started out as a joke. Because most things started out as a joke with Eddie.

This was, by far, the best punchline she'd ever gotten from him.

"Eddie!" Fred Benson said, the surprise obvious in his tone as he walked toward the new arrival. Fred had been tasked with putting this entire reunion together, but his duties of greeting people and handing out nametags seemed long since over.

Until now, of course.

"You, uh, didn't RSVP, so I don't have a nametag for you," Fred continued as Eddie finished slapping Steve on the back in greeting. "Not that I think it matters. Everyone knows who you are, obviously."

A few feet away, Chrissy heard Jason snort. He'd been slowly, steadily creeping toward her throughout the night, and Nancy kept swooping in to whisk her away. Making Chrissy laugh at how aggravated he clearly was.

"Nah, no worries, Fred, my man!" Eddie said, smacking him on the back so hard Fred's shoulders buckled a little. He looked so much smaller, standing there beside Eddie. Then again, Eddie Munson had always been larger than life. "I'm, uh, actually not staying long. Duty calls, and all that. Just thought I'd stop by and--"

He cut himself off when his eyes, scanning the room as they had been since he arrived, finally landed on her.

Everything around them went quiet. Fading into the background, into insignificance, until the only thing Chrissy could see was the deep, unending honey of Eddie's gaze. They widened, just a fraction, as he absorbed her presence, then crinkled with a smile so broad it ripped the breath from her lungs. Abandoning the people who were still trying to talk to him, Eddie strode across the ballroom and met her where she was standing.

Gosh, he was electrifying. Donning his stage persona for the public always made her body heat up in the most delicious way, and Eddie had turned that up to an eleven for their former classmates.

"Chrissy Cunningham," he greeted, his voice loud as he intentionally used her maiden name. Knowing it would make Jason bristle, as though his name she reluctantly still wore was a brand he'd imprinted on her. The thought made her cringe.

It wouldn't be her last name much longer regardless. If the ring she accidentally found in Eddie's sock drawer six months back meant anything.

"Eddie Munson," she greeted in turn, her own smile making her cheeks ache. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"I was just in the neighborhood."

"Oh, yeah?"

"Figured I'd swing by and, y'know, see how my beautiful girl is managing in this podunk town," he shrugged, his hands coming up and gently cupping her cheeks. She'd heard multiple camera clicks at this point, so she knew her face was on the verge of being slapped across every tabloid by next week.

Chrissy couldn't care less. Her things were already in a small moving van, halfway to New York by now.

Humming, she brought her own hands up to wrap around his wrists. Holding him in place, like an anchor in the storm of their onlookers.

"She's managing," Chrissy responded. "Quite a bit better now, though."

"Yeah?"

"Yes."

"Isn't that just swell?" Eddie asked before leaning in and capturing her lips with his.

For as long as she lived, Chrissy would never get over the feeling of Eddie's lips on hers. Every kiss was a new sky full of shooting stars, altering the very gravity of her existence. Until it wasn't the ground that held her in place, but his arms, his existence. Until he was the only tether to reality she had ever known.

More camera clicks. Of course. Chrissy grinned, breaking the kiss with her own elation, and giggled when Eddie rolled his eyes.

"Told ya," he murmured, a secret just for them.

Smiling, she just shrugged again. "Let them talk."

"Oh, I plan to," Eddie responded, suddenly bending down and scooping Chrissy up into his arms. She squealed, clinging to him, as he marched his way through the flapping jaws he'd expected. Everyone staring like they couldn't believe what had just happened.

Nancy, Barb, Robin, Vickie, and Steve all seemed to be in various states of shock themselves, and Chrissy knew her voicemail would be full to bursting by the time she actually got to plug it back in.

That would be later's problem, though.

As he walked them through the hotel lobby and toward a waiting car, Chrissy giggled in his ear.

"You certainly know how to make an entrance."

"All part of the biz, baby," Eddie laughed. "Though, between you and me?"

"Hmm?"

"That was, by far, the best entrance I've ever made."

"Was it?"

Stopping before the car, Eddie grinned again. Giving her yet another long, slow kiss. A show for the droves of people that had followed them from the reunion. Cradled against his body, Chrissy had never felt more complete. More comfortable.

More at home.

"Can't wait to one-up myself."

"Is that already planned?"

"Yep," he smacked his lips, then grinned, devilishly handsome, as he slid them into the backseat of the car. "Guess you'll have to wait and see."

Thinking of that ring, the home they would soon share in New York, and the life they were on the cusp of beginning, Chrissy grinned. She couldn't wait.

Chrissy loved to read. To escape into alternate worlds. To maintain some modicum of sanity, stuck as it was between the pages of her favorite novels. A reminder that, no matter how everything seemed intent on going wrong, there was always, always hope that it would get better.

Getting publicly dumped at a party over spring break, for example, and then being told by her own mother that it was her fault for not being a good enough girlfriend? Seemed like the lowest point of her life.

Then, to find out that said ex-boyfriend was suddenly and miraculously dating her best friend? Or, well, ex best friend, she supposed, despite Monica's insistence that it just happened. Like a person could do a back tuck handspring and happen to fall into bed with the basketball captain that just ended the Hawkins cursed dry spell and won the state championship trophy.

Yeah, it didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out the truth. All at once, Jason's extra attention he'd been giving her the past couple months made so much more sense. Despite being official, she and Jase had never needed to be so public with their relationship. It was a comfortable thing; a coexistence of sorts didn't demand every spare part of her.

Then, like the flip of a switch, she was suddenly doted on. Told constantly and consistently how loved and valued she was, with entire declarations made before the school that had her masking her discomfort with a small smile and a blown kiss.

Realizing that Jason was using that sort of behavior to cover up sleeping with her best friend for, like, two whole months before he finally worked up the courage to leave her was maybe the lowest she could be.

Or so she thought.

When she finally confronted him, asking him how he could just flush two entire years down the drain for the person Chrissy thought she could confide everything in, and having Jason look at her like she was some pathetic animal stuck in a drain?

The clincher was his excuse.

"It just seemed like, I dunno, you'd fall apart if I left. You're so fragile, Chris."

As though her entire life, her happiness, depended on a boy who couldn't even be honest with her.

That--- That was the lowest she could be.

She had other friends, of course. Friends who were absolutely there for her as she worked through the nightmare of navigating the last couple months of school in the shadow of betrayal. Friends who were happy to cut off Monica, Jason, and all of Jase's friends in the aftermath.

But it was her books that kept her afloat. That reminded her, staring up at the crevice from rock bottom, she had nowhere else to go.

So, she started climbing.

And it was then that she learned all those metaphors about people and weather were real.

Because Eddie Munson blew into her life like a hurricane of leather and denim. A maelstrom of destruction and devastation, unafraid of leveling everything in his path. All of those expectations laid on her shoulders, weight heavier and heavier as they stacked higher and higher, were lifted into the eye of him and washed away in the wake of his thunder.

What the fuck? Don't let those assholes' judgements make you feel like that. God, Chrissy, seriously, why do you let them speak for you? Why do you let them dictate you? What are you, a marionette? Cut your strings, Pinocchio, you're ready to dance on your own. I'll hold your hand if you need it, but swear to Christ, you've got incredible legs. Let them hold you up.

Chrissy, why the fuck do you put yourself through all that bullshit? Why are you pretending you're fine with that asshole dating your ex best friend? Aren't you fucking mad? Then be mad. Be fucking furious. Be feral. Go for the goddamn jugular.

Cunningham, are you serious? Why do you let your mom control you like that? Why does she think it's okay for to talk to you like you're fucking worthless? You're not her doll. Jesus, Chrissy, be you, I'm on my knees here. I'm desperate to see the real you, c'mon, don't leave me in the dirt.

A chance encounter at a party that snowballed into this incessant need to be near him. To listen to him as he rambled on about his dungeons game or his music or anything and everything that came to mind. Never had she met someone so unapologetically unafraid to be themself. And Eddie wasn't only unapologetic; he was loud. He was boisterous.

He was captivating.

And he was right.

She was mad. She was fucking furious. She had spent so long, so painstakingly long, trying to make herself small and demure and perfect when all she wanted to do was file her nails into talons and rip those expectations to shreds. She wanted to scream, blood dripping from her teeth and hands, and prove that the desolation of imperfections wasn't desolate at all. It was beautiful, full of haphazard debris she could use to build something new.

Something honest.

Something real.

"Start here," Eddie said, standing at the edge of the quarry. Of course, she'd told him about all those desires. All that desperate need to feel whole after so long letting everyone else pick pieces of her for themselves. They'd been friends for over a month, and it was getting harder and harder to ignore those butterflies that took flight in her stomach whenever he so much as glanced in her direction.

Would she mess everything up if she took that chance?

Could she forgive herself if she didn't?

"C'mon," Eddie said, reaching out and taking her hand. Collecting her in the calm of his embrace as the storm raged on around them. "You scream, I'll scream."

"We all scream for ice cream?" Chrissy jested, making Eddie guffaw. Which only served to heighten the wings beating tornadoes in her stomach. To know that she could make him laugh was such a power.

"Of-fucking-course, sweetheart," he grinned, that pet name falling off his tongue like chocolate fudge topping. Like limbs broken from trees in the aftermath of the rain. Devastating in its rich sweetness. "We'll go out for ice cream anytime you want."

Lacing their fingers together, Chrissy squeezed tight as she stepped even closer to the ledge. Staring at the long, deep drop beneath her feet. Like she'd step off the lip and plummet straight back down into rock bottom.

Like she'd somehow, incredibly, already found the strength to climb out. Or maybe, maybe, like Eddie's rain had helped her float back up.

These were the thoughts that plagued her mind as she screamed, long and loud. A werewolf howling at the moon, teeth and claws unable to rip into flesh and bone instead tearing into the dark expanse of night. Bleating out the excess of scars she didn't realize pulsated beneath her ribs.

She screamed until her throat was raw. Until her lungs burned with the effort of holding that thunderous note. Until tears blurred her vision, the rainclouds of her eyes finally full enough to burst from her ducts and leak down her cheeks.

When she was finished, Eddie grinned, bright and beautiful. The sun peeking through the clouds, white teeth like rays glinting rainbow fractals against her heart. Then, he turned and let out his own howl. Far more animalistic, like the wolf she envisioned herself to be, and Chrissy took in another big breath before joining him.

Harmonious disaster, amplified against the quarry walls.

As they finished, laughing together in cleansing relief, Chrissy realized that this, this, was precisely where she wanted to be.

Hand-in-hand with Eddie.

Standing at the precipice of everything and nothing as it echoed their fury back at them, becoming quieter and quieter the longer they stood together.

Turning toward her, Eddie was all light and joy as he opened his mouth. Probably to ask her if she felt better. If she needed another go. But Chrissy was far too distracted by the little piece of hair stuck to his bottom lip.

Her free hand came up, brushing it away, before her fingertips trailed against his jaw. Head tilting curiously to one side, Eddie watched her with those dark, dark eyes, swirling with promises that she would never be the same if she took that leap.

She couldn't take it anymore.

She wouldn't forgive herself.

She surged onto her toes and crashed her lips against his like a clap of thunder.

It wasn't fireworks.

It was lightning.

Electric and unpredictable, it zipped across her skin in a jagged pirouette of sensation. Igniting her from the inside, making her glow with blinding light as Eddie gasped and groaned and let go of her hand to wrap his arms around her. Holding her to him. Keeping her.

"Christ," he breathed when they finally parted. The hand against her waist fisted in the fabric of her sweater, pulling her closer and holding her like rivers had carved his arms from stone just to keep her in place. "What-- What? Am I dreaming?"

Chrissy giggled, reaching up to kiss him all over again.

"Not dreaming," she swore, her fingers twisted in the lapels of his jacket. "Just, um. I've been--b-been waiting for that, I think."

"Yeah?" he verified, his voice a breath against her neck as he pulled her in, in, in. "You been waiting for little ol' me, baby?"

The smile that stretched her cheeks tasted like the air after the rain had passed. Sweet and terrifyingly addictive.

"I think maybe I have all along. I just didn't realize it until you showed up."

It took a gentle, skilled hand. Delicate steadiness as the tension wrench held its place; as the pick itself was eased into the mechanism, searching out the correct code that would imitate the teeth of the lock's key.

Eddie had that shit down to a science.

House locks were, of course, significantly easier to pick, which Eddie only knew because he'd practiced on his own, Jeff, and Gareth's houses multiple times. His own because, well, obviously. Jeff and Gareth's houses were hit because they had a running joke on who could get away with stealing his DM screen for a couple weeks over the summer.

The joke was, in fact, on them, as Eddie not only got his screen back all five times, but he also unscrewed all of the lightbulbs in both houses, took every single battery from every device, and hid every left shoe he could find in their respective dryers on the way out. Plus he might've gone free range on the kitchen snacks available.

Still, he'd gotten pretty damn good at picking commercial locks at this point, too.

Which is why he was currently perusing aisles of Starcourt's J. C. Penney in search of a Christmas gift for his girlfriend.

Look, alright, so maybe one of the dumbasses on the closing shift happened to forget to turn on the security alarm after Eddie bribed him with a free quarter-ounce. What was he going to do, not take advantage of someone else's shortcomings to get his beautiful girlfriend something she absolutely deserved?

He'd buy her stuff, too, of course. He wasn't a total asshole. But Grant and Gareth, who had come into the store with the expectation of spending their hard-earned cash on gifts for their mothers, had instead been kicked out by some haughty clerk who thought they were fucking degenerates or something. Getting a little smidge of revenge at the cost of free-ninety-nine was a bonus. Plus, it wasn't like he was stealing from Melvald's or some other mom-and-pop. The CEO of a monopoly like Penney's could afford the tax write-off his little fractions-of-pennies-on-the-dollar excursion would be.

Still. Penney's was pretty old-lady-adjacent, so Eddie didn't have super high hopes that he'd find something worthy of Chrissy Cunningham.

The thought stopped him in his tracks, flashlight pointed up toward the ceiling as he let out the most lovesick fucking sigh known to man. Which, thankfully, no one else was around to hear. He couldn't help it. She was just so--

She was just--

She was Chrissy.

What a fucking rush that was to remember.

They'd been together since Halloween, which was still wild to think about. Tina's Halloween Bash; the continuous catalyst of the goddamn century. The year prior, it had been Steve Harrington and Nancy Wheeler's end; this year, it was Eddie Munson and Chrissy Cunningham's beginning.

Though, technically, they'd been friends since the second week of school, when they were randomly assigned as partners in biology to do a project on manatees. Which her boyfriend-at-the-time had thrown a goddamn fit about. Very toddler tantrum-adjacent.

Thank whatever god was listening Chrissy considered that the final straw and freed herself from that jerkwad.

Was her kinda-kleptomaniac of a current boyfriend much of an upgrade?

Abso-fucking-lutely, thanks so much for asking.

Eddie paused in front of the perfumes, taking a moment to sniff a few of the testers. While most of them carried a heavy dose of Eau de Grandma, one of the citrusy ones was actually really nice. Eddie took a moment to clear his nostrils, then sniffed it again just to be sure, and, yeah. He could totally see himself burying his face in her shoulder, that scent filling his nostrils as he thrust--

Yep. Going in the bag.

(He was not gonna pop a hard on while looting the local J. C. Penney, actually.)

Alright, onto jewelry.

Of course, most of that stuff was locked away, and while he could easily slip the case open and perform a diamond heist, he wasn't willing to get any of the poor salespeople in trouble when Bitch Manager walked in and saw all the jewelry was missing. Plus, if he kept his findings small, the chance of anyone checking the security footage from the parking lot was nil, so.

He wasn't stupid enough to park in the lot, but he still had to walk out of here.

"Sorry, sweetness," he muttered to the Chrissy phantom living in the back of his mind, fingertips tapping against the case. "No diamonds this year."

Maybe next year.

Snorting, Eddie instead walked along the discounted jewelry still adorning some of the displays. Searching for something that screamed Chrissy Cunningham at him. He knew she liked small, delicate pieces. Pretty and classic, like her. And gold over silver, he was pretty sure. She usually wore thin gold bands on her fingers to match that gold bracelet. She had her share of bangles and shit, too, but those weren't every day wears for her.

He wanted to get her something she'd want to wear all the time.

A claim, of sorts, he knew. Adorning her with something he picked out. Kinda sick, maybe, but she drove him crazy, so. 'Sick' was just another goddamn adjective when it came to his endless depths of feelings for her.

He was on the verge of giving up. The longer he spent in here, the higher his chance of getting caught by one of the night patrol security guards currently walking the mall. Plus, he had the perfume, and a few things he still planned to get her from better, less corporately evil places.

Then, as he turned back toward his unlocked door, he saw it.

And grinned.

~🦇🩷🎄~

"Eddie! What are you doing here?"

She was grinning, though. That whisper-shout of her admonishing belied by the spread of her teeth. Glinting in the muted moonlight, Eddie just shrugged, dramatic enough for her to roll her eyes from her bedroom window.

The window Eddie had just pelted with pebbles.

They'd seen each other at school earlier that day. Had plans the following morning to hang out at his house and drink hot chocolate, which, Chrissy admitted, she hadn't had since she was a small child. Eddie splurged when he went to the Big Buy for their date. He bought milk to heighten the chocolatey endeavors and everything.

Still, it wasn't enough.

He'd never get enough of her.

"What, you want me to leave, baby?" he asked, matching her whisper-shout. "Resign me to the destitution of not getting to see my gorgeous lady in the late hours?"

They were technically on winter break now, so it wasn't like he was interrupting her beauty sleep by showing up after eleven.

Plus, her light had still been on, so.

"Oh, my god," Chrissy groaned, still smiling. "Get up here, then!"

Eddie scaled the wall with a practiced ease. Chrissy's bedroom faced the backyard, with a trellis that climbed up to the first-floor awning covering the back porch. It took a few seconds for him to get a good grip, considering the soft flurries of snow currently floating down from the sky and wetting her windowsill, but he tumbled into her warm room maybe a minute after her beckon.

"Brrrr," he said, pretending to shiver as Chrissy slid her window shut. Shaking a few droplets of wetness from his hair, he dove at her. "Hold me, sweetness, I'm freezing."

"Oh my-- Eddie!" she hissed when his cold hands found purchase beneath the Metallica t-shirt of his she was apparently wearing to bed. A t-shirt he'd left unintentionally the last time he stayed over and had to jump out the window with unzipped pants and a bare chest so her mother didn't catch them.

Shivering herself at the cold, Chrissy grumbled half-heartedly as she pushed on Eddie's jacket, trying to get him to strip. Eddie pulled back just far enough to waggle his eyebrows down at her.

"Damn, Cunningham, you want me that bad already?" Leaning close, he caught the lobe of her ear before whispering, "What, this afternoon wasn't enough?"

"Eddie--"

"I thought I got you there at least twice before I fu--"

The shiver she gave him this time was entirely unrelated to the cold, he was pretty sure, but she still shoved against his chest with an embarrassed squeak, which made Eddie laugh. Grabbing the straps of his backpack, she stepped around him to pull that and his jacket off.

"The leather is cold," she explained, carefully hanging it on the back of her desk chair. "I don't want it touching me!"

"I dunno if you noticed, but it's snowing out there."

"Yeah, which is why I think you need a proper coat," she huffed, though entirely without malice. She knew what his battle jacket meant to him.

"Aw," Eddie cooed, pulling his backpack off the shoulders of his jacket and setting it next to her bed before grabbing her hips and yanking her against him. "My pretty girl cares about my health and well-being?"

Those gorgeous blue eyes rolled back so far, Eddie was pretty sure she was looking at her own brain stem.

"Of course I do," she mumbled petulantly. "One of us has to."

Jesus Christ. Barely two months and she had his heart in a fucking sieve, ready to pulverize it into mush. Maybe she'd make a smoothie out of it. Drink him down so he could find space to live inside of her, his heart right next to hers.

He never needed it, anyway. Goddamn him if it could go to a worthier recipient.

"I know Christmas isn't until next week," he murmured, brushing a lock of her hair back over one ear, "but I got you something."

At that, her eyes lit up like a fucking Christmas tree.

"You did?" she asked, disbelief coloring her tone. "You didn't have to do that."

"Well, I did it anyway," he shrugged. "Actually, I got you a few different somethings, but I wanna give you this one first. The rest are under the tree back home."

It was the first time he and Wayne put up a tree in years, and it was entirely because Chrissy had mentioned in passing that she'd never gotten to decorate one, even as a kid. Her mother always did it, with designer bulbs and perfect white lights. Not a lick of character to be found.

They'd even made new ornaments last weekend. With construction paper and glitter, with popsicle sticks and pipe cleaners, and with hollow bulbs and paint. All of Hellfire, plus Max and Jane, had piled into Eddie's tiny trailer with supplies and snacks, and they'd made a night of it. It was a fucking great time.

Chrissy cried in his arms once everyone was gone because she had been so insanely happy, and the heart in his chest that was already hers had constricted and expanded like it was gonna burst. Full Grinch style.

They sat on her bed together, Eddie toeing at the backpack for a second until he could drag it close enough with his foot to get it open.

The jewelry box from J. C. Penney's sat on top of a spare change of clothes and his toothbrush. It was just a paper and cardboard thing with a bow, not at all the velvet box of anything fancy, but Chrissy's eyes were still wide and a little wet as she plucked it carefully from his hands. Looking up at him for a long moment, like she was waiting for him to yank it back and psyche her out of her gift.

When he made no move to give her a stipulation, which was a thing he'd hopefully eventually work out of her, she slowly eased the top of the box open and gasped in delight.

"Oh," she breathed, one small, delicate finger gently tracing the golden curve of the charm. "Oh, gosh, Eddie, it's beautiful."

A gold-plated necklace with a simple '86' charm sat atop a cottony pillow. Discounted, probably because it had been a gift for new students to the class of '86. Now that school was well and truly underway, the drop in sales had been enough for it to hit the rack with a slight price decrease.

Or, in Eddie's case, a very lofty price decrease.

Eddie gently took the box from her, plucking the charm from its pillow and twisting the chain until he could find the clasp.

"Turn around."

She did, lifting her hair for good measure as Eddie slid the chain around her delicate neck and clasped it. He leaned down, letting his lips trail against the elegant slope of her throat.

"Gorgeous," he murmured into the soft spot just below her ear. Making her gasp and squirm a little, her hips twitching against her bed. "Gonna be our year, baby. Isn't that right?"

Breath hitched, Chrissy just nodded. Leaning back until she was reclined against his chest, giving Eddie unfettered access to her neck. Trailing lazy kisses up and down the expanse, Eddie paused again, nibbling her lobe before asking,

"You know what would make it even prettier?"

"What?" She was already breathless, and Eddie grinned against her flesh.

"If it was the only thing you were wearing."

Chrissy sat up again, turning fully to look at him. Her eyes were wide, full of unabashed heat, and a half-second later, her shirt - his shirt - was hitting the ground.

Eddie groaned. Pouncing, swallowing her giggle for himself.

'86.

Our year.

Eddie. Chrissy couldn't believe she'd never really noticed him before.

Well, that wasn't entirely correct. It was sort of impossible not to notice Eddie. He was so unabashedly loud, so boisterous, that his presence filled up a whole room when he wanted it to. And sometimes, even when he just existed in the same general space as her, Chrissy couldn't help but see him.

But she felt so shallow when she realized that she'd never noticed him.

That afternoon, at the picnic table, Eddie had looked at her and managed to parse out far more about her mental state than anyone else in her life. All of her friends, her boyfriend, who laughed and cooed and told her they loved her so much that the words felt empty. Hollow. Entirely void of meaning, while their hawkish eyes watched her just to make sure they saw it when she finally fell apart.

That wasn't fair. She knew that wasn't fair. But she couldn't stop thinking about it.

Eddie wasn't like that, though. And maybe it was because she just hadn't been around him enough to think he might find use for her outside of a silly drug deal in the woods, but there had been more concern in his eyes as they glittered in the afternoon sun than she'd seen on anyone else in ages.

Except maybe Ms. Kelly. But even Ms. Kelly had told her she just needed to sleep.

Cautiously, Chrissy approached the front window of Eddie's trailer. Listening, searching the fogged distance for any sign of a grandfather clock someone might have accidentally left on their porch.

The toll came again. Louder. The same chime, the same note as the one that had echoed through the woods. When that clock lodged itself into a tree and openly mocked her with its impossibility.

Another booming chime, even louder, and a fourth, and Chrissy yanked the curtains shut.

"Eddie?"

Eddie had been the one to chase away the clock before, hadn't he? As though his very existence was enough to pull her back to reality. To a place where clocks lived inside of homes, not inside of her mind. The screaming sound reverberating between her ears like it could drown out all other noise.

Why wasn't he responding? This boy who was so content to make himself known, whenever he so chose.

"Eddie?" she called again, fighting the instinct to be inconvenient. Forcing one foot in front of the other as she chased Eddie down the short hallway of his home. "Did you find it?"

The sounds of his house had changed. Morphed, the closer she got to his bedroom. A familiar sound, but maybe it wasn't. Maybe it, like the clock, was just in her mind, and she'd turn the corner and find Eddie doing something completely innocuous.

She just needed to find Eddie.

She just needed to––

"Just letting this out for you, dear," her mother said. Sitting at that sewing machine, the familiar methodical humming making her skin prick with phantom needles. The sharp stab of her measurements echoing from healed bites on her hips and ribs.

But her mother was at home. Half a town away, completely unaware that Chrissy was breaking every rule, every bar of her gilded cage to be in Eddie's home.

The needles pricked up the length of her spine like spider's legs, spreading fear from her waist to her nape, and Chrissy took an unintentional step back.

"You're going to look absolutely beautiful," her mother continued, turning, and Chrissy didn't want to look because she knew it would be wrong. Yet her eyes refused to see anything else. That fear spread, forcing a sharp scream from her throat as sallow skin and blank, hazy eyes looked at her, creating a monster with her mother's visage.

Slamming the door shut, Chrissy turned, hoping she would find Eddie in the living room of his home. Maybe they had accidentally bypassed each other. Maybe he could make it all go away again.

But it wasn't Eddie's home.

It was her house.

The second-story hallway that led to her mother's sewing room, though it was different. Wrong. The hall was supposed to be longer, without a door at her back.

A door that was suddenly being wrenched open.

"Chrissy!" the thing that wasn't her mother screamed. Her voice and its, mixed together in a vicious cadence that struck her ears like knives. Like pins. She grabbed for the handle, slamming it shut once more, but the force of whatever was behind it pulled and yanked and screamed again in that same harmonic dissonance. Wrenching it open again and again, like whatever was on the other side could break it down completely if it wanted to.

But first, it wanted to play.

Chrissy gave up. With a hoarse cry, she bolted from the door, the heavy eyes of her family's painted portrait following her as she rushed down the stairs.

The top of her father's head was just visible over his normal recliner in the TV room, and Chrissy shouted for him. Some part of her convinced that maybe he could make the visions go away. That he would reassure her it wasn't real, just a nightmare, and she'd wake up in bed at home and find him worriedly looking at her, like when she was little and he was still allowed to care.

But it wasn't her father. Of course it wasn't.

It was a horror wearing his skin. A monster, mouth and eyes sewn shut by the methodic thrum of her mother's machine, and he screamed wordlessly, soundlessly, the terror stuck in his throat because it had no exit. No entrance. Like a puppet.

She screamed again.

She ran.

The dining room was laid out with dishes of food she wasn't allowed to touch. All of it rotting, the smell hitting her nose at the same moment the vision hit her eyes, and it took strength not to gag. Like all that decay had created a wall, and she'd run smack into it, the force making her eyes water with disgust and fear and oh, god, please help me.

She ran again. Bypassing the entire rest of the house, because this house was not safe. This house was a maze of impossible terrors. The only place to go was out, into the safety of night's arms.

But night was gone. Wooden slats boarded across the door held her in, the house's embrace a tension she was afraid would suffocate her whole.

"Help me!" she screamed, though she knew, she knew, what lay beyond that door was nothing more than an abyss. She felt it, just as she'd felt her mother's wrongness searing an imprint like pinprick scars into the flesh of her body. "Please, help me!"

"Chrissy?" someone shouted, and oh, god, oh, god, it was another trick, but he--

"Eddie!" she cried, banging against the slats. "Eddie, please, please, I'm here! I'm here!"

"Chrissy!" he yelled again, closer, and a shadow passed over the thin beams of light coming through the wood. "Holy shit, you're--"

"Chrissy," a voice, deep and wrong, hummed behind her. That voice no longer hiding behind her mother's tone. That voice that sent the spiders skittering back down her spine.

"Eddie, it-- It's coming, it--"

Fingers were scrabbling between the slats, yanking at the boards. Taking initiative, Chrissy pushed from the other side, feeling it give way with a low groan. It dropped with a loud thunk, and familiar rings glinted in that light with no source as they wrapped around the second board.

"Chrissy," that same low rumble said again, followed by wet, horrible footsteps. She couldn't look. She couldn't. But, oh god, it was closer.

"Hang on, Chrissy, I'm coming," Eddie grunted. "Hang on, just-- Get back, okay, get back!"

She did, barely, as a heavy boot suddenly slammed into the wood. Sending splinters flying, the thick wood concaving toward her. Her own hands darted out, grabbing and yanking, as a third board caved inward. Uncaring of the scratches that seared her fingers.

"Can you--?"

A low hum of consideration came from over her shoulder, right there, just as those ringed hands shot through the small opening he'd created. Chrissy didn't hesitate, her hands wrapping around his without care for the splinters she could feel digging into her skin beneath her sweater.

Eddie heaved her through just as something wet and impossibly cold grabbed for her leg. She felt it dig into her flesh, her muscle, like crashing icicles that imbued the very blood in her veins with an arctic chill.

Chrissy screamed as Eddie shouted, and then, all at once, she was in his arms. Together, they hobbled down the porch of a house that was not hers, stepping into the dark like two lighthouses ignited from within.

He was the only thing she could see.

"Oh my god, Eddie," she breathed, throwing her arms around his neck without conscious thought. The anchor she couldn't bear to be another falsehood. But his arms, warm and strong, wrapped around her waist and held her close for a long moment. Breathing her in, like he knew, somehow, that he'd just saved her life.

He smelled like sweat and lighter fluid, and Chrissy could feel her tears soaking into his neck, but he was real, and he wasn't going to hurt her. He wasn't going to scare her.

"Jesus Christ," Eddie gasped, his own voice wet. "Jesus Christ, Chrissy, you're-- You're here."

He said it like he knew what was going on. Like her nightmare was something he had already faced. It gave Chrissy pause, pulling back just enough to look at him.

And she gasped in a different sort of horror.

"Oh, you're-- Eddie, oh no, you're bleeding."

"It's alright--"

"No, no, oh my god, I'm still dreaming, I'm still stuck--"

"Chrissy," he said, his voice firm as he set his hands on her shoulders, fingers clinging desperately to her. Blood stained his mouth a dark red, matting his hair beneath the black handkerchief he wore. She looked down, seeing crimson spreading along the white of her sweater where it had pressed against his abdomen, and stifled a gasp.

"You're not dreaming," he said, as though that made any sense. "Not really."

She could feel tears, hot and quick, soaking her cheeks, but Eddie remained so, so clear before her.

"Listen to me, okay?" he said. "This is important, and you have to listen. Got it?"

Unable to speak, unable to take her eyes off the blood, Chrissy just barely managed to nod.

"When you wake up, I'm not going to remember this."

"But you said--"

"It's not a dream, but you're not awake," he clarified, as though that made any sense. His eyes were such a deep, rich brown, but he looked so pained. So hurt. They, too, were brimming with tears, one finding escape and cutting through the blood and grime on his cheek. "And I'm there, but not this me, okay? Tell me-- This is important, okay, you gotta remember: Tell me to talk to Dustin about the Upside Down. Tell me to tell him it's a code red, and the lights flickered, and you and Max are being hunted by a thing called Vecna. Tell him it's creating gates, and you were supposed to be one of them. Dustin will explain everything."

"E-Eddie," Chrissy said, her jaw warbling. Eyes still rapt on him, but he grew brighter. Harder to look at. Like he was a star on the verge of eruption.

"What's your favorite song, Chrissy?" he asked suddenly, and Chrissy shook her head.

"I-I don't--"

"You need it, okay?" The hands on her shoulders trembled, shaking her a little, and his voice cracked. "Fuck. You need it, so this doesn't happen again. When you feel yourself start to slip, when the nightmares feel like they're coming back, play that song. Okay?"

"Eddie, please, what's going on?"

Something so terribly lost, so excruciatingly forlorn fell across his expression. He looked over her shoulder, like he could see something she couldn't, and the smallest, saddest smile graced his face.

"I always liked you," he told her, the ache in his voice cutting her down to her core. Past the flesh and bone and into the very depths of her soul. It cleaved her heart right in half. "Always wish I knew what it felt like to kiss you."

"Eddie--"

"Maybe I'll get a chance this time."

With a gasp, Chrissy suddenly opened her eyes.

Eddie shouted, wrenching his hands away from her shoulders as crazed eyes cast about the room. No longer wearing the handkerchief, his hair created a halo around him as he shook with fear.

"Chrissy?" he asked, his voice tentative. "What the-- What the actual fuck was that? What-- The lights, and your eyes--"

"Eddie," she sobbed, unable to keep herself from collapsing into him. He caught her, a shocked noise erupting from his chest, but didn't immediately let her go as she broke down.

He just held her.

He just let her cry.

I always liked you.

"Eddie?" she finally said, her voice hoarse and arms clinging to him like he was the only real thing in an ocean of wrong. He mumbled something, words or sounds, she wasn't sure. She could feel herself trembling, but she couldn't do anything to stop the vibrations of her body. The last leaf, clinging valiantly to the tree of her sanity.

"We need to call Dustin, I think."

A pause. And then:

"What?"