Chapter Text
When Chrissy wakes up, after, it’s to the sour smell of bile and bleach. Cigarette smoke. Under that, something herbal. For a moment she’s still half stuck… somewhere else. Physically she knows her body is crumpled on threadbare carpet, or something. Mentally… it had been like floating face down in a pool. Like the summer she’d almost passed out from the heat and drowned, like the Christmas she’d spent hunched over the toilet trying to bring back up the glazed ham and mashed potatoes her dad had made. It was like her mom had her hand on her shoulder and that smile on her face while she talked about how promising Chrissy is. How happy Jason’s going to be the day she wears all white. It was like she had a voice, she’d found her voice, and not being able to scream with it. Scream for someone she knows is there who isn’t her parents, or Jason, or anyone who only thinks about her promise and not her potential. But it takes her a couple of seconds of deep breathing to get away from what she remembers. Like dragging herself from sleep. It’s the smell she notices first because she can’t seem to focus on anything. It’s just a mess of oranges and dark colours and two stripes of hideous bubblegum pink in the gloom that keep moving back and forth and back again and—.
She blinks. They’re rubber gloves, the movement is scrubbing, and the sour smell is vomit. It’s a good distance away from her, though, so. That’s good. When she tries to lift her arm to rub her eyes it hurts somewhere deep in her hand. Her fingers. Her palm, her wrist.
The radio is still playing Echo and the Bunnymen. She hadn’t heard of them before today but - listening for the first time with the setting sun filtering through her eyelashes and Eddie singing along softly beside her - it had curled somewhere deep below her breast and meant something . Something which allowed her to see the chance for destiny and fate controlled by herself and the real and tangible around her. Not God. Not Him.
But dear God she wants a drink. Her mouth feels thick and woolly and the shape she knows as Eddie’s back hasn’t turned around to her yet, so he hasn’t noticed, and she doesn’t want to scare the shit out of him or anything. So she drags herself up, drags herself to sitting, drags her lame hand into view and squints at how the fingers are all strange angles. No wonder they hurt. Chrissy supposes this strange numbness must be shock. She clears her throat, because it hurts, and Eddie startles but no pants-shitting is added to the mess on the floor.
“Holy cow, Chris. You okay? I called 911, they’re coming, maybe—. Maybe don’t move your hand?” He’s crouched like a gargoyle, hands between his knees, bubblegum pink. Sponge dripping between his fingers. “What the fuck was that? Let me—. Stay there, I’ll get some frozen peas and—. God, water? Water.” Confirming when she nods. What the fuck was that? She doesn’t know. She’d just fainted, hadn’t she? But that dream… it’s better not to think about it, she doesn’t want to get stuck there again. Instead she listens to Echo and the Bunnymen and the noise of Eddie rooting around in the freezer and the pour of cold water from bottle to glass. He doesn’t trust the plumbing in the trailer, she guesses. “Here, don’t—. Try not to move too much.” He’s lost the sponge and gloves, tosses a towel on the wet patch on the floor, and comes to sit beside her. Like kids hiding in the playground, head ducked against hers, bag of peas passing from one hand to the other after he hands her the water. His hands are cold too. It’s a relief after the hot claustrophobia of… whatever it was she was dreaming about. It’s hard to remember when there are freezing, slightly damp fingers aligned under her own. She doesn’t even notice the pain anymore.
*
The thing is, okay, Chrissy isn’t used to anything being real. Even the furniture in her house is covered with plastic. There’s wax fruit on the hallway table and the fucking chest-on-chest in the dining table is a goddamn fake. Chrissy can see where it’s been cobbled together. It’s clumsy, but it’s not real . Fake like every other aspect of her life. Fake friends, fake smiles, she suspects eventually (if she takes after her mother, which is probably her biggest fear), fake tits too. So it’s no surprise when Jason turns up with a bunch of fake flowers which kind of smell like a nursing home, even if it is a little insulting when she’s outside surrounded by real flowers. The hospital patched her up pretty good, but she won’t be waving her pom poms anytime soon. Which kind of suits her… fine. Her mind isn’t on cheerleading, right now, anyway. Nor should it be. It’s spring break. With this in mind (she assumes), once he’s checked her over to make sure it really is just her hand (“That freak better watch his damn step,” “Eddie didn’t do anything. It’s thanks to him I got an ambulance at all.”) that's damaged, Jason makes himself scarce. Good. Maybe she hit her head harder than she meant to, or maybe that… dream altered something deep in her but she’s not in the mood to play the good girl anymore. Chrissy doesn’t want fucking plastic coated dining chairs in her house, no sir.
She’s so tired of fake. She trashes the fabric daisies the first chance she gets (almost immediately after she watches Jason fade into the proverbial sunset), and ignores the frantic note from her mother ( No social escapades! Home by seven! , fuck that, her parents won’t even be home until ten), then sets off at a rapid walk with her wrapped up hand tucked into her armpit and her head firmly down. The last person - the only person - she can think of right now who won’t fake her out or bullshit her is the person who put her in the ambulance. After all, she can’t stop thinking about--. What the fuck was that? And since she can’t remember what the fuck it was, he’ll have to remind her.
*
“Chrissy, what the fuck?” She’s starting to think he doesn’t know any more exciting words, but Eddie is a sight for sore eyes and she feels that stiffness - the fake - drip off her in visceral oily tendrils. Like something she hadn’t noticed creeping up her leg until it’s torn her shin to shreds. Something alien just waiting for her to drop her guard and--. “Chris? C’mon, don’t go all,” Eddie’s hands spread in the space she’s been staring at for God knows how long, “space cadet on me now.” No, she thinks, not after last time.
“Can I come in?” It tickles a memory for her. Do you have anything… stronger? Like it’s the same act of rebellion folded in on itself. Eddie makes a face she isn’t sure about - like he’s not sure himself - and looks over his shoulder and she thinks… well. Technically she has a boyfriend so she shouldn’t be mad if he has a girl in there. Whoever it is. She and Eddie don’t have anything except this shared experience she’s struggling to grasp, and he might not even know they share it. Not really. Not to the level she thinks they did. That the fear was real and palpable with no explanation.
“Uh,” there’s a gaggle of raised voices, and then a laugh she definitely recognises but can’t quite place, and then Eddie looks back at her with these deep, deep dark eyes and she thinks that actually she would be mad if he had someone here after all, but, “sure, yeah, cool. Did uh—,” he looks over her shoulder, “you here by yourself?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I ditched Jason at the mall and—.”
“Then you’re welcome anytime.” Theatrical as ever he bows her through, long arms and long hair and the hint of ink across his chest where his shirt has become a valley. “Seriously. It’s good to see you.” Oh, all the tension melts from her shoulders and she laughs. She laughs like they’re back in the forest and he’s making her forget to be frightened without the drugs at all.
“To see me back to being the queen of Hawkins High, you mean.”
“No.” Those eyes again. Chrissy feels her breath catch, and then he’s smiling too. “Just good to see you.”
*
The trailer feels bigger than she remembers it, but then, last time it didn’t have five extra people in it staring at her like she’s the horror. She knows Steve Harrington, obviously. Lost ever since him and Nancy split, wandering around after her and the kids like a babysitter. She considers asking him what rates their parents offer, but then… maybe she would have before . Before she’d come to Eddie in the woods. Before he pulled her out of the waking nightmare that something in her won’t let her remember.
She remembers the girls name before she remembers the kids, and it kind of springs out of her in a,
“Robin! Gosh, I’m so sorry, I’m not used to seeing you without—.” She mimes the hat, and Robin blinks, and suddenly there’s no tension at all because they’re all laughing and it’s not mean . When was the last time she laughed with someone and it was real and kind and felt like friendship instead of fitting in?
“Yeah, I’ve been thinking of doing a beehive thing, you know? Then on the last day of school maybe people’ll remember who I am, right?” There’s a pang that comes with that. Chrissy struggles with names and faces these days. It feels like a neverending fucking debutant ball with her mothers friends and their daughters and her fathers colleagues and their daughters and the cheer squad and the basketball team and everything, everything all the time. “Maybe I’ll get some fuckin’ sportsball signatures this time, huh?”
“Do you want those?” Even Chrissy can admit that she sounds disgusted. Which means they laugh more. Steve and Robin and the kids… Billy’s sister… the kid with curls… Lucas! Oh God, she can’t believe she forgot him. She’ll apologise later. Right now she smiles at herself and folds her hands in her lap and strokes the tape binding up her hand and says nothing. She says nothing until—.
“Chrissy,” Steve definitely looks lost without Nancy next to him. Once upon a time Chrissy would have elicited squeals of scandal from the cheerleading squad if they heard even a whisper of this kind of proximity. Now she doesn’t have anyone left to tell. But Steve leans into her and wets his mouth and looks back at Max (Billy’s sister!) and grimaces when she looks away, “Eddie says something weird happened here. Last time.” He doesn’t touch the broken parts of her fingers but his gaze falls to them, and she shrugs and turns her eyes to Eddie.
It feels like a naked gaze now. She can’t put on eyeshadow with her hand the way it is. She can’t put on makeup at all.
“I wouldn’t know. I can’t remember. One minute I was waiting for Eddie to come back and—. Listening to that song, remember? The bunny one?”
“Huh? Uh— oh! Under blue moon I saw you, so soon you’ll take me, yeah yeah yeah.” Mostly, Chrissy smiles, Eddie talks with his body. It’s less to do with what he’s saying and more about how. When he speaks to her it’s with his entire being, centred on her, hands waving, fingers spread. “Shit, you remember that? Echo and the Bunnymen.”
“I liked it.” Why is she blushing, and why is Steve looking at her like that, and why is Robin digging a skinny elbow into his ribs? “It was the first thing I heard. Before I opened my eyes. I heard the song.” Chrissy passes the back of her hands over her roasting cheeks and scoots herself backwards on the couch, curling her legs to her chest. “I think I could hear it when I was passed out.”
“You didn’t pass out, though.” After the theatrics - the fullness and loudness she’s getting used to - this is subdued. Eddie is wincing through it like she’s trying to sell him a boyband. He doesn’t want to tell her, that much is clear, he’s furrowed his brow and looked away and the hands he always speaks with are clasped between his knees. Chrissy opens, and then closes her mouth. Whatever it is she can’t remember, Eddie clearly can. “You didn’t… your eyes were open. It was like you were having a fit, or something, I don’t know.” The fear feels like being dropped from the top of the pyramid. That rush and swoop in her gut she associates with the cherry-lime taste of Jell-O shots at parties like the one she missed. The one she’d missed because she was here with Eddie. Who promised she was safe. Who kept her safe. Chrissy swallows, refocuses, squints at him and wets her mouth.
“I don’t remember.”
“Well, I— we think we might know why.”
*
Two hours later, Chrissy is angry. She doesn’t know what kind of bullshit prank this is but she’s not going to just sit there and be humiliated. Not by them. Not by Eddie (oh her chest hurts), not for something she can’t remember. What the fuck is a Vecna? Maybe they are all satan worshippers and maybe this was all a mistake and she’s shouting those things over her shoulder while she thunders down the steps and onto the dirt and doesn’t look back when she hears someone crash out after her. She doesn’t care. They’re trying to scare her and they accuse people like her of being bullies. How dare they?
“I don’t want to hear anymore.”
“Chris— Chrissy we’re not fucking with you, I swear!” Eddie’s hands are huge and warm on her shoulders and a chain hanging from his belt whips against the back of her thigh but she doesn’t even whimper. She just shakes her hair out of her eyes and scowls up at him until he lets go. “Shit, sorry, you okay?”
“Why are you making up stories? I just wanted to know what happened and—.”
“And we told you . We told you. That was the truth. You fucking—.” Huge gestures up to the sky. “You fucking floated and I couldn’t— I mean, I tried and all but—.”
“You’re lying ! Stuff like that it— it doesn’t exist!” Why does she want to cry? Why is there a lump the size of Texas rising in her throat? Why is Eddie looking at her like that ?
“Chrissy I swear to fucking Christ I’d agree with you if I hadn’t fucking seen it with my own damn eyes, okay? I would. It was like a fucking album cover - not in the good way.” He looks so earnest and honest that she almost, almost just bursts into tears to let him comfort her. Almost.
“I’ve seen your band, I don’t think there is a good way to look like a Corroded Coffin record sleeve.”
“ Ouch , Jesus.” But they’re smiling at each other, now, so she supposes… she supposes she has to believe him. That there are creatures out there beyond them. Beyond God. Beyond Hell. “I dunno, Chris, gotta actually have a record to have the art, right?”
Chrissy pretends not to notice that there’s something like longing, something like hunger in his eyes.