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Creel House is fucking creepy.
Eddie knew that it would be and tried to prepare himself, but it's eerie to quietly walk through the dusty, decrepit halls with his blue lantern held high, purposefully searching for an interdimensional serial killer who is trying to end the world.
Chrissy splits off to look at another room, Billy Joel still playing in her headphones, and Eddie's heart leaps into his throat the second she leaves his sight. Part of him wishes that he had been one of the people distracting the bats, at least to give him something to do besides wait and fidget and panic, but Chrissy wanted him here. She asked for him specifically, big eyes full of hope and trust despite how he's let her down, and he couldn't say no. He may have left her last time, when she disappeared right in front of him and the first gate started to open, but he won't do it again.
If Eddie can keep his head, his job will be easy. All he has to do is watch Chrissy dangle herself like a worm on a fishing rod in front of Vecna, then ensure that nothing happens to pull her out of it until the right time.
He's good at being a coward and letting other people do the hard stuff. This should be fine. Max and Lucas are putting themselves in danger, hooking up his sound system in the Upside Down to blast Kate Bush and draw the bats away. Dustin and Steve are finding and rescuing Fred and Patrick. Nancy and Robin are sneaking into the house on the other side and lighting Vecna on fire, facing him head-on. All Eddie has to do is watch for Erica's signal and hope that this time, Chrissy makes it out okay. He just has to hope that Lucas will protect Max enough that Vecna doesn't get his claws in her instead, that the others will be able to find Patrick and Fred and pull them all out before Vecna kills the four and opens his portal. He just has to rely on other people to save him once again.
Erica appears suddenly at his side, and he has to bite the inside of his lip to stay silent when he startles. She gives him an unimpressed look, and he's glad that she's here. No one felt comfortable sending an 11-year-old into the Upside Down, but something about her makes him straighten his spine. She’s someone he has to work to impress. She always seems to have her shit together, confidence radiating off of her in waves, and he wonders if he can steal some of it to make it through tonight.
The piece of paper she holds up read Found Venca. He swallows and nods, then they set off to find Chrissy.
Erica's lantern sits pulsing on the table in the parlor, brighter than Eddie’s and Chrissy's. Chrissy's breath hitches when she sees it, but otherwise they maintain their silence. Erica touches the back of her hand and Chrissy nods at her, acknowledging that it's time for her to take up her post at the playground, and Erica gives Eddie a brief nod before she goes. He listens to her footfalls fade and hears the front door close, leaving only the faint humming of the lamps and quiet notes of "Uptown Girl" bleeding from Chrissy's headphones.
Chrissy folds her arms around herself, one hand playing with the 86 necklace still stubbornly around her neck. She's swimming in his jacket, her cheerleading warm up shredded in the Upside Down, but her hair is once again pulled back in a perfect, tight ponytail, and she scrubbed as much muck off of her as possible in Max's trailer while the others were getting ready. Eddie had watched her pull herself back together in the tiny trailer bathroom, the door cracked a few inches because everyone wanted to be sure Vecna wouldn't try to grab her again while they burned her "Uptown Girl" mixtape. He saw the way she rotated her left arm, wincing when the muscle pulled, cataloging injuries with the practice of an athlete who's had a few. He saw the way she stood taller for a moment when she looked in the mirror, ponytail back in place, then shrunk back in on herself almost immediately.
He looked away when she exited, not wanting to be caught staring, but he never kept his gaze away for long.
Last time he saw her, she was pinned to the top of his ceiling, eyes rolled into the back of head. He thought he'd never see her again, much less see her wearing his jacket and folding it around herself like a blanket.
He gently touches her shoulder, relieved when she doesn't startle, just faces him, eyebrows raised. He gestures to the window and the bench in front of it, and they both bring their lanterns over to keep watch for Erica's signal.
It takes three seconds of Eddie looking at her profile in the blue lamps to realize that he won't be able to sit quietly. Chrissy's eyes are wide, breath steadily moving through her parted lips in a way that has to be practiced, hands curled into the cuffs of his jacket. She looks freaked out like she did that day in the woods, when he interrupted one of her early visions, and his fingers itch to reach out. He wants to crack a joke to make her smile again. He wants to fling himself off that picnic bench and strut around dramatically and hear her musical giggle.
He can't do any of that, so he scrawls out a hasty message on his notepad instead.
Hi, complete with a smiley face. Chrissy glances at him when he holds it up, and a smile blooms across her features. She leans down to write her own notepad, tucking one leg under herself.
Hi, comes the reply. She waves, eyes twinkling, and Eddie's heart thuds loud enough he's sure she can hear it over her music. For someone so sad, she smiles so easily. After tonight, he hopes to see her smile a lot more. He hopes they come even easier to her, and that the sadness that Vecna preyed on gets squashed like a bug beneath her heel.
She bends down to write something else, and he watches the way her bangs and the shadows manage to hide her face from him.
Thanks for being with me
He swallows and blinks down at his own notepad, not able to face her earnestness.
He left her last time. She disappeared and he ran away instead of telling anyone or trying to search for her. She's been in the Upside Down this whole time and he didn't try to get her out until she stumbled right into them in the trailer park.
I'll always be here he replies. He knows that she hears the implied from now on. He knows that she forgives him, because he tried to apologize when he gave her the jacket and she wrapped her arms around him instead, stopping all of the breath to his lungs until he managed to hug her back.
She holds out her hand to him now, and he takes it, wanting to ground her. He's learned that Chrissy Cunningham loves to touch; she was never more than a few inches away from Eddie or Nancy or Steve or Max in the trailer, often brushing shoulders with one of them. He used to see her under Jason’s arm in the hallway, or giggling close with her cheerleader friends at lunch, and he'll give her that comfort now if he can. If she wants to hold his hand, he'll press as close as she needs him to, brushing his thumb over the back of it.
She wrestles one-handed with her notepad, jotting down another note.
Can I still come see your show on Tuesday?
Eddie blinks at the note. It's the last thing that he expects, for her to be thinking of his shitty band at a time like this, and he honestly doesn't know if his name will be cleared by then or if his band is okay based on what Lucas reported Jason had done, but Chrissy is looking at him with something like hope in her eyes, like she's asking about more than just an invitation he threw out without anticipating her to follow through.
He wants to pretend, just a little bit.
I'll get you in for free he manages to scrawl, hoping it's legible even though he had to write it with his bad hand. He adds two little stick figures, him with a guitar and her off to the side in her cheerleading skirt and ponytail.
She lights up again. He runs his thumb over the back of her hand again and resists the crazy urge to bring it to his lips and kiss it. He's not some prince in a fairytale. He's not going to make a move unless Chrissy wants him to. Besides, Jason may be an absolute dick who doesn't deserve her, but he's still out there. Eddie isn't going to do anything that'll give her conflicting emotions.
Chrissy squeezes his hand, then shifts a few careful inches so their knees touch. She turns her gaze back to the window, and they both wait for Erica's flashlight.
-/-
Chrissy gets taken by Venca mid-sentence, and Eddie's heart stops beating for longer than is healthy.
It took some convincing for him to come for her, sending unease rippling through Eddie that maybe he recognized their plan or was going for Max instead, but soon enough he brought her up to the attic, blue lantern pulsing and leading the way. Eddie followed carefully in her footsteps, close enough to touch but never doing so.
This is Chrissy's fight, now. She has to do this part alone.
Still, it was painful to hear her bargain with him. He didn't take her right away when they got to the attic, and she cast furtive glances at Eddie as she asked him why he was waiting. In the end, he watched her take a deep breath and beg him to take her, confessing about how alone and unloved she is here, how no one truly knows her, how much she hates her body and how much she wants everything to end. It breaks his heart to hear, but she needs to say it. She needs to convince Vecna that she would willingly come back to him, and Vecna can see inside her head. It has to be something that part of her believes.
She's talking about Jason when he takes her. One minute, she's confessing that she doesn't think he even knows her favorite color, and the next she's silent, eyes rolling into the back of her head. Eddie flashes his light at Erica, Chrissy's music player clutched in his hands, ready for the moment that she starts floating and he has to cut their losses and hope he can still pull her out. All he can do now is wait.
He wonders if she's realized that Venca has taken her yet, or if he's letting her nervously prattle on, sinking his claws in deeper while projecting the same image of the dusty attic and the blue light she's sitting in front of so she doesn't know to fight back.
Her eyelashes flutter, irises eerily colorless underneath. He glances at her tape, ensuring that there's enough of it left that he won't run out of music when he needs it. They replaced the batteries before heading out, but he's still worried that something will go wrong and he'll be left with his voice instead of Billy Joel's. He'll sing a thousand songs if he thought it would help, but he knows it won't be as effective as her favorite recording.
In an ideal world, he won't have to pull her out. Nancy and Robin will light the bastard on fire and he'll die a painful death, releasing his hold on everyone as he does.
This isn't an ideal world. Eddie is used to things going very, very wrong.
He doesn't know how many minutes pass with him anxiously tapping his foot and staring at Chrissy before he hears Erica's yell. It takes a moment to process because it's so out of place, piercing through the quiet night and nearly unrecognizable. He stumbles to the window, heart in his throat because if a demobat crawled through to this world he won't be able to get to her in time, but he doesn't know what else could make the unshakable Erica Sinclair yell like that, except through the slats of the window he sees two lettermen jackets tearing out of a truck. His heart leaps into his throat as one of them tackles Erica to the ground, but a blur of bright blond hair runs straight to the front door of Creel House.
“Shit, shit shit shit,” he breathes.
Eddie places himself between the stairs and Chrissy, carefully setting down the tape player so it won't get damaged in what is sure to be an intense beating at best or a homicide at worst.
Eddie is not a jock. He has maybe an inch or two on Jason, because the Hawkins basketball team is full of squirts, but he doesn't have the same muscle mass, and he doesn't have a gun. He knows that Jason bought one today, and Eddie could very well be his first victim.
He just has to distract him long enough for Nancy and Robin to kill Vecna. He can't let him near Chrissy. At least Erica yelled loud enough to warn him, so he won't have his back to the bastard when he finally makes his way up the stairs.
Eddie waits, then hears the creak of a careful footstep on the stairs. There's nothing useful in the attic to arm himself with, but he shifts his weight, planting his feet.
He's going to try to distract Jason with words first. Eddie is good at being loud. He's great and getting everyone's eyes on him, for better or for worse, but he's never had to do that while keeping a deranged basketball captain from the object of his desires. If it comes to blows, he'll fight dirty.
Jason slowly and steadily comes into view, eyes landing on Eddie immediately. His hands are empty, for now, and Eddie holds his own up in caution.
"Jason, man, you can't be here right now."
Jason catalogs the way that he's unarmed, too, then sweeps his gaze behind him and finds Chrissy. His eyes widen, and he immediately stalks forward.
"Is that--"
Eddie catches him by the shoulders, pushing him back, turning the momentum around. Jason stumbles, which is how Eddie knows that Chrissy's presence has truly thrown him off, but he recovers instantly.
"You really can't be here right now," Eddie repeats, louder.
"Chrissy? Chrissy, can you hear me?"
He stalks forward again, and Eddie pushes him back again, and then there's the glint of metal in the low light and a gun in his face.
"Woah! Woah, don't shoot, Jason, dude, just--"
"Shut up!" Jason yells, shaking the gun. Eddie's mouth clicks shut. It feels like all of the oxygen has been sucked out of the room, Jason's chest heaving as he breathes, leaving Eddie's own lungs burning.
Jason moves towards Chrissy again, keeping his gun trained on Eddie's chest. He kneels carefully, releases one hand from the pistol so he can place it on Chrissy's shoulder, a facsimile of concern etched into his brow.
"Chrissy?" he asks slowly, shaking her. Eddie wants to scream at him not to touch, but there's a fucking gun pointed at him. “Chrissy?” He shakes her harder, like he’s trying to give her fucking whiplash.
“Stop! You’re–”
“Shut up!”
Jason stands so fast that Eddie stumbles back a step, hands flying up again in a perfect pose of surrender. For a moment, they stare at each other, both tense, muscles coiled for a fight.
“Is there anyone else in the house?” Jason asks lowly, dangerously.
Eddie wants to say that he is, that Vecna is right on the other side of the veil, but he doesn’t. If Jason found out that Chrissy was currently in the clutches of a serial killer and Eddie still refused to wake her, he’d shoot.
“Answer me!” he bellows.
“No,” Eddie says, voice steadier than he feels. “It’s just me.”
Jason nods once. His hand isn’t shaking anymore, but the way the shadows play over his face looks like a war for control.
When Eddie was fourteen, he found a rabid raccoon out back near the woods behind the trailer park. He hadn’t realized it was rabid at the time, because it was relatively docile. It moved slowly and carefully, gaze sliding over him without focusing, and Eddie got close enough that he thought he’d be able to take it home and feed it and finally get that pet he always wanted. Of course, that was when its mood flipped like a switch, snapping its jaws around his arm so tightly Eddie was sure they’d have to cut it off.
Wayne took him to the hospital to get a rabies shot and ensure his arm was properly looked after, then gave him a gentle lecture about being careful around other creatures. Just because they seem calm doesn’t mean that they won’t rip your throat out.
“Turn around,” Jason commands.
You don’t turn your back on a wild animal.
“Not when you have a gun pointed at me, man,” Eddie says. “If you’re going to kill me, you have to see my face when you do.”
He doesn’t think Jason will shoot him yet, not now. Not until he knows what’s happening with Chrissy or has had the chance to properly justify Eddie’s murder out loud. He always needs an audience, just as much as Eddie does.
Jason sets his jaw.
“Put down your flashlight and empty your pockets.”
Refusing him twice in a row might be pushing his anger too much, so Eddie does so. His lighter clatters to the ground, along with his wallet, the 20-sided die he keeps with him, and a few crumpled-up tissues he tossed in there at the last minute in case Vecna’s visions make Chrissy cry when she comes to. He left everything else at the trailer park.
“Okay,” Jason says. Eddie can practically hear the gears in his mind clicking as he thinks.
“Here’s what’s going to happen,” Jason says, voice still even. “You’re going to stay right where you are, and if you move, I’ll shoot you. You’re going to tell me how to wake Chrissy up from whatever the hell this is. Then, if I find out you hurt her, I’m going to shoot you anyway.”
Chrissy’s breathing quickens, eyelashes fluttering slightly. She’s fighting. Eddie doesn’t know what she’s seeing, but she’s fighting. He wants to scream at Jason to get away from her, to just leave them the fuck alone because this is bigger than his petty high school jealousy and Chrissy can fight her own battles, anyway.
“Did you hear me, freak?” Jason yells. “Tell me how to wake her up!”
Eddie slowly shakes his head.
“I can’t do that.”
“Like hell--”
“If she wakes up too early, we all die. Everyone in this fucking town.”
Jason shakes his head and cocks the gun.
“Wait, wait!” Eddie scrambles. “You want to help Chrissy, right? There’s only one way to wake her and I know it, you can’t kill me yet! Not until I explain!”
“Explain what?” Jason spits. “How you and your–your cult kidnapped Chrissy, how you’ve kept her for days, doing–” Something in him breaks, and the creature that comes to the surface of Jason’s face is just as controlled for now, but ten times as vicious.
“What the fuck did you do to my girl, Munson?”
If there wasn’t a gun and Vecna and the apocalypse on the line, Eddie would laugh.
“I never touched Chrissy.”
“You put her in your jacket–”
“There’s another guy!” Eddie yells quickly, choosing to ignore the fact that Jason sees sharing a jacket as a sign of possession rather than basic human decency if a girl is cold. “Vecna. A demon, of sorts. From another dimension, so we can’t see him, but that’s why the light is brighter. He’s here right now. He’s the reason Chrissy is like that. She’s trying to stop him.”
Jason blinks twice, more of a twitch than a conscious movement.
“And you–you summoned this–”
“No!” Eddie yells. “Why the fuck would I summon a demon? We’re all trying to stop it! I can barely get people to come see my band, let alone lead a cult!”
“Then why was Chrissy at your trailer, huh?” Jason yells, eyes starting to take on that same manic gleam as the raccoon’s when it bit him. Eddie’s window for survival is quickly closing. A voice in the back of his head keeps telling him to run, that he’s in too much danger staying here.
“You brainwashed her! You seduced her, then–”
“She was buying drugs!”
“Liar!”
“Venca was making her see things! Awful things! She just wanted help!”
“She would have come to me!”
Eddie wants to laugh. Jason wouldn’t know that something was wrong with Chrissy if she explicitly told him, unless it pertains to him somehow. He doesn’t know that Chrissy’s favorite color is blue, like the eyeshadow she always wears and her pencil case and a clear summer sky. He probably doesn’t know that her favorite song is “Uptown Girl” because she likes the way the melody makes her smile and the lyrics feel like a fantasy she wants but can’t speak about. Eddie bets he can’t even tell the difference between the smile she pastes on for the crowd when she’s having a bad day and the one she wears when she’s genuinely enjoying her cheer practice, flipping through the air like she can grow wings and fly away.
Eddie bets that Jason doesn’t remember the way she glowed at the middle school talent show.
“She didn’t want to worry you,” he says, hating himself for needing to lie and stroke Jason’s ego. “You had the championship game on your mind.”
Jason shakes his head viciously, hand trembling around the gun.
“No. I know you’re lying. If Chrissy needed help, the last person she would’ve come to–”
Eddie takes his chance and lunges at him, ducking as low as he can to try to get out of the line of the gun. He doesn’t have time to think, doesn’t let himself flinch at the bang as the gun goes off to his side, just gets his hands around Jason’s middle and wretches him away from Chrissy and to the floor, following him down. The gun slides across the floor, and Eddie’s grateful that Chrissy won’t be hit by a stray bullet.
Jason lands two great punches on his face, easily flipping them over. Eddie aims for the throat, misses, tries to knee him in the dick and gets the stomach instead, is definitely going to have a concussion if he somehow survives.
It’s so stupid. There’s an interdimensional, supernatural serial killer in the room, and Eddie is going to die at the hands of a self-absorbed eighteen year old dick who thinks Eddie stole his girl.
He needs to distract Jason long enough for the others to kill Vecna and release Chrissy. He needs to get Jason off of him in case Chrissy starts floating.
Eddie fights dirty, because it’s the only chance he has at winning. He’s gotten in a few short scrapes at the Hideout, but nothing like this, and Jason isn’t some half-drunk guy trying to impress his friends. Jason is a rabid raccoon, except with ten times more hate. Eddie dodges as much as he can, but ends up taking many more punches than he lands. He scratches at Jason’s face, throws elbows, and almost cries in relief when his hand closes around an old vase on a box in the corner, finally giving him a weapon.
He shatters it over Jason’s head, glass raining around them, and that’s when he sees Chrissy’s feet leave the ground.
“Shit!”
Jason tries to stagger to his feet and Eddie throws the hardest punch he ever has, hand screaming in pain. Jason goes down hard, but Eddie doesn’t stay to watch him hit the floor. He’s already stumbling over to Chrissy’s tape player. His hand won’t listen to him, fingers burning with pain as he tries to close them around it, so he swipes it with his left hand and stumbles over to Chrissy.
He jumps, fingertips barely brushing the bottom of her shoes. Something squeezes his chest.
It can’t end like this. Eddie didn’t just knock out Jason fucking Carver for him to fail Chrissy again.
He jumps off of the chest she was sitting in front of, managing to wrap a hand around her ankle despite the pain screaming at him from his fingers. Tears burst involuntarily to his eyes, but he can’t take any time to wipe them away, pulling Chrissy down by her legs until he can brace her back against his chest with one arm, using the other to clumsily try to put the headphones on her.
He presses the wrong button first, fingers stiff, hands shaky with adrenaline, but finally he hears Billy Joel start singing.
“Please, please please please,” he mutters, holding her tighter. “Please, Chrissy, you can do it. Come back Chrissy, please. Fight him off, you can do it. You need to come back now, please Chrissy.”
He keeps saying things, pleas spilling out of him without conscious thought, and presses his cheek to her shoulder, wincing at the pain that blooms in his face. Her feet are still not on the ground, some invisible force pulling her upwards like a helium balloon, but he tightens his grip.
If Venca is going to take her again, he’s taking Eddie, too. Eddie’s not letting go this time.
“Please, Chrissy, I know you can come back,” he begs. “I know you can. You’re the bravest person I’ve ever met, just come back, please. Please, Chrissy, I need you here. You have to run. You have to escape him and come back to me. Please, Chrissy.”
Distantly, he registers that Erica is pounding on the door, calling his name. He registers that he’s in a lot of pain all over his body. He registers that Jason is passed the fuck out in a pile of glass in the corner. But he doesn’t actually think about any of this.
He keeps saying Chrissy’s name like a prayer. He keeps holding her like he can keep her safe.
When she falls to the ground, he’s wholly unprepared and drops with her.
“Eddie!” she gasps, eyes back to their original, beautiful blue, clutching at his arms around her waist.
“Chrissy?” he asks.
“They did it!” she exclaims, twisting around in his lap to face him. “They did it, Eddie, they killed him! It’s done!”
“What?” he asks, sure that he’s hallucinating. Chrissy’s brow furrows, eyes prickling with concern as she takes in the carnage on his face. He winces at her touch on his cheek, as gentle and welcome as it is.
“What happened?” she asks, fingertips coming away bloody.
“It’s done?” he asks. “You’re okay?”
“It’s done,” she confirms. “I’m okay. I felt it. I felt the fire and his pain. It’s done.”
He starts to laugh, a hysterical, joyful thing that reveals to him just how much his ribs hurt right now.
“I didn’t run this time,” he says. Chrissy’s eyes soften even more.
There’s so much shit they have to figure out. They still have to reunite with the others and confirm that it’s over. Something has to happen with Jason. The more that Eddie sits here, the more sure that he’s going to pass out once the adrenaline wears off, and he probably needs a visit to the hospital for whatever head wound is leaking blood and his hand and everything else. None of that matters right now, though. Right now, Chrissy is safe, and Eddie didn’t run. He tilts forward to rest their foreheads together and smiles.
Everything else can wait for five seconds. Right now, they’re both safe, they’re both here, and they’re okay.