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“What is this?” Eddie asks when she places the square of plastic into his outstretched palms.
He opens the eyes he promised her he’d keep closed when she’d bounded into their clearing and announced she had a gift for him.
“Chrissy Cunningham.” He says in bewilderment, eyes flicking from her face to the offering cupped in her hands and back again. He plucks it from her gingerly, holding it at arm’s length like it might bite. “Did you make me a mixtape?”
The tape is wrapped in pale pink, the sleeve notes painstakingly written out in glittery purple gel pen. Every i is dotted with a heart, letters neatly joined as they list each and every track she chose for him, of her most favourite bubble-gum pop songs, catchy and upbeat and chock-full of that most demonic of musical monstrosities: synthesizer.
She lifts one shoulder bashfully, pressing her cheek against the wool of her cheer jacket.
“I thought you might like to broaden your musical horizons.” She goads, tone soft and light as she drops onto the picnic bench and looks up at him.
She doesn’t tell him how she loves watching him come alive to music, the way his body moves almost without permission, fingers twitching over imaginary guitar strings, a puppet to his beloved melodies. The way he goes no, Cunningham, no wait, just wait for- this bit, this bit, fuck, doesn’t it just melt your brain and closes his eyes to get wrapped up in a particular guitar solo or deeply felt lyric.
And she may not quite get it, doesn’t feel music in her pulsing through her veins like he does, but she does like dancing; enjoys the rush of throwing herself around and feeling in control for once, knowing she can hit each beat, peel apart the rhythm and melody and choose which one to let her body follow.
He won’t get it and that’s okay, but he’s shared so much with her – his time and his home and occasionally his stash of the really good weed – so now she’s offering him a tiny piece of her that for a while now she’s had buried deep down. He’s helped bring back it to the surface, so she’s thanking him by handing it over in this spool of tape housed in a tiny box of plastic.
Eddie barks out a wild laugh, hyena-sharp and ringing through the trees.
“Cyndi Lauper, Madonna, ABBA- Jesus fucking Christ, Cunningham.” He reads aloud in bemused disbelief, curls bouncing as he throws his head back.
She’s not offended as he howls to the sky; maybe a few weeks ago she would have felt a sting of hurt, humiliated that she’d read their situation- friendship- relationship so wrong, but she knows better now, knows him. She speaks Eddie now and every incredulous chuckle feels like a playful punch to her shoulder.
He’s absolutely goddamn delighted and she glows with it, preening into his radiance. Who would have thought that out of the two of them, doom-and-gloom Eddie Munson would be the one who shines?
Eddie spins, leaves kicking up under his feet, cackling. “Yazoo, Cunningham, fucking Yazoo.”
It’s infectious and she giggles, tugging her cheer jacket over her hands as she clasps them to her chin.
“You’re never going to listen to it, are you?” She asks through her fingers as he flops onto the bench opposite her, still turning her tape over so the glitter catches in the ray of sunlight.
“Absolutely not.” He says, eyes widening as he slips it into the pocket of his vest like the world’s worst sleight of hand. “But you’re cute for trying.”
Chrissy gets complimented a lot, usually about things completely out of her control – what a great taste in boys she has, how well her squad did cheering at the game last week, how cute her uniform is – but people seem to glance over who she actually is when it comes to praise.
Eddie doesn’t.
Eddie sees her.
“I know.” She says primly, batting her lashes.
His mouth upticks in a curious little smile. He almost looks proud of her for claiming the compliment.
“You’re a total freak for this, Cunningham.”
A few weeks ago, she might have been alarmed at that.
She speaks Eddie now.
Chrissy tilts her head to the side, chin still cupped in the palms of her hands.
“I know.”
*
Two days later, she hops into the passenger seat of his van as he guns the engine, muttering under his breath as the whole vehicle shudders and refuses to come to life. It’s as temperamental as it is beloved and stubborn too, but Chrissy is growing inexplicably fond of it at a rate almost on par with its owner.
He smacks a hand to the dash, his old failsafe (works every time, Cunningham, every time ), rings clacking against the cheap plastic, and the tape desk splutters before cranking into action.
Eddie lurches for the dial, but not before the instantly recognisable opening trill of Girls Just Want to Have Fun rips through the van.
They sit in stunned silence for a moment, while the engine purrs into life.
“We never speak of this.” Eddie says solemnly.
Chrissy titters.
“Never speak of this.”
“But Eddie-“
“Don’t.”
“Girls just wanna have-“
“I swear to Satan, Christ and everything in between, I’ll kick you out of this van, Cunningham.”
She widens her eyes dramatically at him, pushing her bottom lip out into a pout.
He lets her play the tape all the way back to his trailer, but draws the line at singing along.
*
“The time has come.” Eddie announces grandly, interrupting her homework as he bursts into their clearing. “For my revenge.”
Chrissy unwinds her legs from under the picnic table, springing to her feet as he draws something out of his pocket. Something rectangular and plastic.
She lets out a delighted laugh, almost tripping over her feet to get to him. Instantly, because he so likes to tease, he raises his arm, dangling the item over her by his forefinger and thumb, laughing at her put-out expression.
She jumps for it, one hand pressed to the leather of his jacket, twisting into it for leverage as she hops with her free arm above her head, reaching for the tape above his.
“Eddie!” She whines petulantly, but that only makes him grin ferociously and raise it higher.
He chuckles when her fingertips finally snag at it, scrabbling to get a proper grip on the tape so she can yank it out of his hand.
“Ha!” She chirps triumphantly, right into his face.
Right into his face, which is mere inches from hers.
They’re not at eye-level, even when she’s up on her best ballet tippy toes, but he’s tilted his head down and hers is raised up, and she’s still gripping his jacket. His hand is on her waist, clearly snuck there to help her balance as she’d bounced, and his fingers flex against the fabric of her t-shirt.
She brings her arm down, tape clutched victoriously, and he abruptly releases her, stepping back, eyes darting through the trees but not settling on anything in particular.
“It’s dumb.” He warns in a self-deprecating tone, scratching the back of his neck with the hand that has just vacated her waist. “And it’s also the most girly shit I could find in my collection, so…”
Chrissy slumps against the nearest tree trunk, running a dainty finger down the smudged chicken-scratch track list he’s scrawled in the case. He’s watching her almost timidly, hiding behind his curly mop of hair like he’s worried she might laugh in his face again and actually mean it this time.
She recognises some of the names – Blondie, definitely – but a lot of them are new to her.
She pictures Eddie flipping through his vinyl, painstakingly putting aside tracks he thinks she’ll like, female artists and crooning rock ballads, shuffling the heavier metal stuff away. It makes her heart tug to think he thought of her outside of their time together, that she was on his mind the way he always seems to be on hers these days.
She looks up and meets his cautious eyes.
“Can we listen to it later?”
The way he switches is quite remarkable; it’s like his whole body lets out a breath of relief, spine straightening so he once again towers at his full height, hair tossed back and chin jutting forward. Cool, calm and collected. His intensity is like a physical force, the hitch of a skipped heartbeat, pinning her against the tree.
She thinks idly that she wouldn’t mind it if Eddie Munson did pin her against a tree. Or a wall. Or his van. Or- Anyway.
Something crackles along the fallen leaves between them and Eddie nods.
“Sure. Later.”
*
Later is her pristine sneakers scuffing over the worn carpet of his trailer when he drags her to her feet and sets the tape playing in his boombox.
She can’t dance to it in her usual way, but Eddie tugs her scrunchie free so her hair falls loose around her shoulders and shows her how to headbang. She feels ridiculous at first but then the blood starts rushing in her ears, drowning out her thoughts and her worries and the sound of her mother’s voice in her head, until the whole world is just a blur of blonde waves, Joan Jett crowing in the background.
She looks like she’s been dragged through a hedge backwards, then forwards, then back again when she finally collapses onto the sagging sofa but she feels lighter than she has in months, years probably. For a few minutes, she can pretend she really is the wild girl Joan Jett screams about being, together with the wild boy currently lounging next to her with an almost delirious grin.
Chrissy definitely isn’t a cherry bomb, a crackling ball of light, but sometimes when Eddie looks at her like that she feels like one. Confident, taking up space, letting off sparks and making everybody look.
She thinks she understands his manic edge a little better now, adrenaline coursing through her limbs like after she gets thrown through the air mid-routine, the relief and amazement of landing back on her feet so thrilling it makes her tingle.
Eddie makes her tingle.
Especially when his dark eyes drop briefly to her mouth, drinking in her answering grin before flicking resolutely back up her face. They’re both out of breath and the air he expels fans over her face, ruffling her bangs as he slumps beside her; still, there’s the usual careful distance he always keeps between them. For everything they’ve shared, personal space is not on the list, Eddie making sure they rarely touch, keeping to his side of the picnic table even when it isn’t there. Under all that hair and metal, he's a gentleman, more than any of the all-American boys she’s been with before, who want to put their hands up her skirt but don’t seem to know what they’re doing once they’re there.
If her hair looks wild, his is a full-blown tempest and she sees her hand moving without permission to brush some of it out of his face. His breath catches as she tucks it away, hand trailing through his curls then over the heaving of his chest, the mane of his curls giving way to worn-soft leather beneath her fingers.
She finds herself leaning closer, sees those dark, dark eyes grow impossibly darker. He smells like sweat and leather but it’s not unpleasant; his Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows heavily and it must be the blood still pounding around her head that makes her think licking up the column of his throat would be a good idea.
It probably would. Or it definitely wouldn’t. Or both.
She’s too much of a coward to find out.
Chrissy reaches past him and rewinds the tape back to Cherry Bomb and thinks a real cherry bomb girl would have just kissed him.
She plays it again and again and again and pretends to forget that her scrunchie is still coiled around Eddie’s wrist when she goes home.
She likes how the green velour looks nestled between his leather and spikes.
*
She plays it so often (on her Walkman, obviously - her mother might think she’s joined a cult if she heard The Runaways blasting from under her bedroom door) the tape scrambles.
Eddie makes her another one and a third to keep in his trailer, for good measure.
“Always be prepared, Cunningham.” He smirks but she can tell he’s proud of himself from the slight pink of his cheeks.
“What a Boy Scout.” She trills in response and resists the urge to peck a playful kiss right on top of his blush.
*
Thank god for the third one.
*
It’s the one that blares into life when Eddie’s back smacks into the boombox.
Not that Chrissy sees this; she’s trapped in her house despite being in Eddie’s trailer seconds before, running from her mother, from her father, from the seven foot tall thing that’s stalking down the corridors.
Her palms are getting splinters as she beats them against the boarded-up doorway. Tears are tracking down her face, running into her mouth as she screams desperately, terror jolting through her in electrifying bursts.
The footsteps stop and she can sense it’s right behind her, can almost feel its chilling breath ruffle her ponytail as she freezes, nails dug into the wood.
That’s when she hears it, faintly, that familiar guitar riff. Her song, the one she wished was about her, the one Eddie gifted her and danced to and was almost maybe going to kiss her to.
Can’t stay at home, can’t stay at school.
She wants to hear it properly.
Down the streets, I’m the girl next door.
She wants to kiss Eddie Munson.
I’m the fox you’ve been waiting for.
She can’t do either of those things if she dies here.
With renewed vigour, she slams her entire dainty, calorie-deficient body into the planks of wood until they begin to groan.
Hello daddy, hello mom…
One board falls away under her fists, then another.
Hello world, I’m your wild girl…
She starts kicking, sneakers crashing through planks, sharp edges catching at her shins but she keeps going.
I’m you ch-ch-ch-cherry bomb.
With every board that falls, the song becomes clearer, then there’s a gap big enough for her to squeeze through and she is running, running towards Joan’s voice, towards her unapologetic battle cry to the world, to the anthem Chrissy has been playing non-stop with the hope some of it will sink in through her skull and stick.
Then-
“Chrissy! Chrissy, come on, I don’t like this, Chrissy, please-“
-and suddenly she’s crumpling down, crumpling into Eddie’s arms, her arm broken and uselessly hanging as pain sears through her shoulder. She feels strung-out, loose and willowy like she does after a particularly gruelling cheer practice times a thousand.
He’s roughly palming her face, trying to get her to look at him and all she can think, dazedly, is that he’s touching her – Eddie Munson is the one instigating touching her, clammy palm on her cheek. Distantly, she’s aware he’s still talking, repeating her name – Chrissy, not Cunningham and what does that mean – asking her to focus, trying to get her attention like he hasn’t had it since the first time she hesitantly approached him asking for weed.
She looks up at him vaguely, struck by how he’s even closer than he was that night on the couch, how those eyes that she thought were more or less black are actually a deep, rich brown even when filled with desperate tears.
“God, fuck.” He whimpers when he sees her register him. “What the fuck was that?”
“I’m your wild girl.” She tells him, solemnly.
“You can be anything you want, Chrissy, as long as you never fucking scare me like that again.” He pants, still tinged with panic.
“Okay.” She agrees, kisses him, then passes out.
*
She wakes up to Cherry Bomb blasting through her headphones on a loop, Eddie’s little freshman friends gathered nearby. Every part of her body aches and her ears are ringing from the loud music, so she slips the headphones around her neck until Joan is just a tinny ringing, the familiar beat against her skin a comfort blanket.
Eddie spots her first, immediately dashing over when she stumbles to her feet to put a supportive arm around her waist.
She finds she quite likes this new Eddie touching her thing. She hopes it continues after the threat of mortal peril has gone.
“Hey, you’re awake.” He says redundantly, ushering her over to the kids who all look at her in awe.
“How did you do it?” The only one she knows by name, Sinclair from the basketball squad, demands.
“Do what?” She asks, voice hoarse; she feels Eddie’s arm tighten around her ribs in concern.
“You escaped from Vecna.” The curly haired one with the perpetual cap tells her like she’s supposed to understand what that means.
“Of course she did.” Eddie says easily, like a few hours ago he hadn’t been screaming and crying at her to wake up, like he has all the faith in the world in her. “She’s Chrissy Cunningham.”
He catches her eye and his cocky exterior shifts slightly, a sliver of vulnerability and relief and something that looks an awful lot like pride peeking through.
“She’s a real cherry bomb.”