Work Text:
[ years with
one
murderer
goddamn
pig
hurt me
love you,
babe
disgrace
billy!
t r y
the
d r e ss
papa lies
henry you need to
stop this
one
tell
eleven
hungry
empty-mouth
nancy
more, want more
hungry
“Chrissy, this is for you.”
sc r ea m i n g
chrissythisisforyouchrissythisisforyouchrissythisisforyouchrissythisisforyouchrissythisisforyouchrissythisisforyouchrissythisisforyouchrissythisisforyouchrissythisisforyouchrissythisisforyouchrissythisisforyouchrissythisisforyouchrissythisisforyouchrissythisisforyouchrissythisisforyouchrissythisisforyouchrissythisisforyouchrissythisisforyouchrissythisisforyouchrissythisisforyouchrissythisisforyouchrissythisisforyouchrissythisisforyouchrissythisisforyouchrissythisisforyouchrissythisisforyouchrissythisisforyouchrissythisisforyouchrissythisisforyouchrissythisisforyouchrissythisisforyouchrissythisisforyouchrissythisisforyouchrissythisisforyouchrissythisisforyouchrissythisisforyouchrissythisisforyouchrissythisisforyouchrissythisisforyouchrissythisisforyou chrissy
queen
hawkins
high
chrissy
mean
me?
robbing me
maid took the week
o f f
corroded
say the
safe
i promise
word
coffin
queen
hawkins
high
chrissy
mean
me? ]
“Chrissy?”
me.
The thing that used to be Chrissy Cunningham chokes on a breath and lifts her head off of her knees.
“You okay?” soft eyes.
picnic table in the woods
soft eyes
Eddie?
But she knew that. She already found him.
Eddie’s eyes burning wet and black and hellfire, “Holy shit, holy shit, Chrissy --”
She blinks.
“What’s wrong?” Eddie asks. He’s crouched in front of her -- he shouldn’t be doing that, it’s not good for his side -- his eyes dark and wide as they rake over her. Still so, so soft, but scared, too. Her fault. All her fault, she’s sorry.
“Nothing.” Her voice cracks, dry. She swallows, tries not to think about her mouth, her throat. She presses her back against the wall. It’s straight. It’s straight, so her spine must be straight, too. “Nothing,” she repeats, “I was just...” But she can’t find a way to finish the thought, feels it fade out on her lips.
“Somewhere else?” Eddie says.
Nowhere. She reaches down deep inside until she can hear it, the electric snarl of strings. As long as she can still hear the music, it will drown the rest out. As long as she can still hear it, she’s okay.
You don’t remember?
She does. She promises, she does.
She breathes out, shaky. “Yeah.”
“Do you need to talk?” he asks, his voice pitched low. “We can borrow El’s room for a minute.”
“No, I’m… I’m okay.”
Eddie doesn’t push her. He doesn’t fill the silence, either, just rocks back on his heels and watches her, dark eyes dragging down the curve of her jaw, the angles of her face.
A week ago, it would have terrified her.
Boys stared at her legs and the hem of her skirt and her mouth and it itched like a new sweater even after years, but she was a good girl, and good girls were allowed to be shy, so she ducked her head and pretended it wasn’t happening.
Eddie Munson stared, but every time she noticed him his eyes slid away, bored, like he hadn’t been looking at her at all, just through her. Eddie Munson stared and Chrissy knew somehow that he saw, too, not her skirt or her skin but underneath to what was inside, just stuffing, nothing real. Nothing even impressive enough to gawk at. She was sure, she was so sure she was everything he hated, everything he snarled about when he was prowling cafeteria tables like something that could never, never be trapped, so she ducked her head and stared at the floor instead -- but she couldn’t pretend it hadn’t happened.
Mean and scary?
Yeah.
Because if he ever looked at her for more than a second, if he ever opened his mouth, it would be to tell her exactly what he thought of her.
Chrissy, this is for you.
He hasn’t looked away since. Maybe it’s because he knows she’s not stuffing inside, now. Knows she’s a real girl, saw the blood and the bones. Saw her come apart and felt her fit back together, so he’ll know if it starts to happen again, he’ll know it’s her even if she does. Wrongwrong body all angles and he still…
“Holy shit, holy shit, Chrissy --”
me.
She presses her tongue to the roof of her still too-tender mouth, and just… just sits. Knows Eddie will wait.
She lifts her eyes to the line strung from one wall to the other, sheets rippling as people pass or rogue air drifts through the boarded-up windows. She can make out silhouettes behind them, the quiet chatter of a few of Eddie’s friends, the Hoppers. It’s already too many people for such a small space, but when she closes her eyes the sound washes over her and she can still hear herself, still make herself out in the buzz.
She wants Eddie to say her name again. He would if she asked. She turns the memory of it over and over instead, tracing the firm edges of the first syllable and trying to gather up the softness of the rest.
She hears the rustle of blankets, jeans and metal brushing wood flooring, as he folds himself to the ground in front of her.
“I’m awake,” Chrissy says.
“You don’t have to be,” Eddie says, and she thinks about on a daily basis and she thinks about a boy’s body hitting the ground but springing back up again and she thinks about the right thing and how it sounds in his mouth, every single time. “You wanna lie down?”
She shakes her head. It might be a lie, she’s not sure yet.
She opens her eyes before she can start to scare herself into thinking they won’t.
They do. They open, because there’s no reason why these ones shouldn’t deflated, colorless sack like a grapeskin clump of hair, blue powder glint of gold slithering up her throat into in the pool of sludge voided onto the attic floor, the number that used to dangle off of it just a warp of metal.
She reaches up, doesn’t touch herself anymore than she has to until she finds the chain, the shape of the pick already too familiar between her fingers for something that’s not hers to hold.
She glances up at Eddie. He’s watching her hand, some strange light in his eyes before he blinks, looks away. “Do you…” She swallows, can’t get the question out. Doesn’t want the answer, even though it’s selfish, even though he’s let her have it for days without bringing it up even once. It’s been long enough. She should be able to let it go.
“Nope,” he says with a sharp shake of his head. “Gonna need you to hold on to that for me, Cunningham.” His mouth tugs at the corner, a little rueful. “Not as pretty as the one you lost, but…”
Chrissy tightens her hand around the pick protectively, ignores the hum in her fingerbones, her teeth, like she’s bitten down hard on metal. Eddie stops, the self-deprecating smile slipping off his face. “It’s beautiful,” she says, and it’s just the truth. Black and red and spiderwebbed like some strange organ. “It brought me through,” she reminds him, “twice.”
Fingerbones humming like she’s laid her hand on an amp, electric boom to kickstart twisted-wrong tissue.
Eddie’s eyes snap to hers, and it’s too easy for time to shudder in on itself, for her to blink and see him in the hellscape shadow of the Creel house’s attic, eyes wet and black in his too-pale face and his side redredred and his hand pressed to hers, the chain hot from his skin. “Something from our Hawkins. Maybe it’ll make a difference.”
And he fell through the final gate and bounced to his feet, curls flying and she couldn’t laugh because of all the wet and ache in her throat but she wanted to, she wanted to, and she thought that if this body couldn’t hold shape outside this dimension, if she dissolved into particles, she wanted them to tangle in Eddie Munson’s hair.
“Then I’d feel a lot better if you kept it on,” he says.
“Okay,” she says, too small for all the weight on it.
He nods once, sharp, and drops his eyes to his hands. She sees the too-big breath he takes as it moves his shoulders. She passes Eddie’s pick between her fingers, tries to keep her breathing deep and even for him. Loud enough to hear.
She can wait, too.
She blinks slowly as her eyes adjust to the light drifting through the sheets, faded blue and gentle. When Eddie’s shoulders loosen a little, she says, “It looks good. Cozy.”
Eddie tilts his head up to look, expression flickering for a few seconds before settling on something wry. “Oh, sure, laundry lines for walls,” he drawls. “Stick with me, Cunningham, I just keep moving up in the world. First the trailer park, now a whole two square feet of Jim Hopper’s decaying cabin -- give me a week and we’ll be bunking down in the classiest ditch in the woods.”
“Eddie.”
His eyes flicker to hers for a moment, his smile tight.
“It’s perfect,” Chrissy says, slow and careful so he hears her, so he knows she means it.
She watches his jaw work for a moment, and then, finally, “You sure you don’t want to share with the kid?”
“I’m sure,” she says. It’s too soft for how certain she is, but Chrissy has never been very good at being loud out of her uniform. “If… if you’re still okay with sharing, I’m sure.”
Eddie sighs, and when he looks at her this time his eyes linger, soft and tired. “Cunningham,” he says, “you’re welcome to any scrap of cardboard I ever end up on. Doesn’t mean I don’t want you to have better options, especially while you’re still healing up.” He nudges at the pile of blankets that they’ve been calling a bed since El and Hopper arrived yesterday morning.
Chrissy hugs her arms around her knees and squeezes, just once, trying not to think too hard about being welcome wherever Eddie is, trying not to rest too much weight on it. “I like it here,” she says, and when his brow ticks up, skeptical, she forces out the other half of that thought, “a lot more than where I was.”
“Yeah, I’ll bet,” Eddie mutters.
She shakes her head. “No,” she says, “not down there.” Still not loud enough, but what she’s learning about Eddie Munson is that he listens really, really well.
His eyes harden for a moment, and she wonders if he somehow heard all the parts she didn’t say, too. Or maybe she has -- it’s hard to keep track of what stayed in her head the past three nights and what slipped out in the dark to stick wet to Eddie’s shirt.
“Yeah,” he says, and the dark look passes out of his eyes as quickly as it came. “It’s kind of cozy, I guess. Really preparing me for sharing a shoebox apartment with all the other struggling musicians.”
It’s a way out, a door cracked open, and Chrissy slips through. She’s good at that. He opened a trailer door for a girl, once, and she remembered. She’s dead now, but she remembered how to go through doors Eddie Munson opened for her, she remembered when it mattered.
“In New York?” she asks, and his brows lift a little, a gentle question there. “You said… the Garden, right? You wanted to play there someday.”
He blinks, mouth curling into that almost-shy smile that surprised her so much, the day she… “Yeah,” he says. “Guess I did.”
She shifts to mirror him, uncurling herself. “You don’t, anymore?”
He crooks a grin at her. “Gotta save the world first, Cunningham. I’m in high demand, Madison Square’s just gonna have to wait.”
The smile doesn’t quite make it to his eyes, so she shifts, presses her knee against his. She feels him start, but before she can apologize, he’s pressing back, just a little. It looks almost right: his skin half-visible through the tears in his jeans, hers tucked away safe in a pair of Robin’s. Black and blue like a bruise.
“Then it’ll be worth the wait,” she says, and means it with everything she has, every snapped-together inch of her wrongwrong body. There will still be a Madison Square Garden at the end of this, and someday Eddie Munson will rattle it down to its teeth the way he rattled hell.
“Yeah.” He twists his rings around his fingers for a moment, eyes steady on her. “Just between you and me,” he says, “I kind of think I’ve already played the most important concert of my life, so.”
Hurt in her stomach like hunger pangs.
She has to fold it up neat, has to put it away somewhere safe in her head where she can’t wear it out, or touch it very much at all, tucked in between all the other nice things Eddie says to make her feel better. She can’t let it sit out, sit heavy, it will crack everything to pieces.
But she’s running out of room so, so quickly. Eddie says a lot of nice things.
Eddie says a lot of nice things and means them, and Chrissy hurts like hunger pangs, and her mother used to say Chrissy was greedy and Chrissy told herself it wasn’t true, Chrissy was small and made herself smaller, Chrissy was quiet and made herself quieter, Chrissy never took anything from anyone her whole life and then her life was over, she wasn’t anything anymore, she couldn’t be greedy when she didn’t even have hands or a mouth to take with but then the boy she was supposed to run far and fast from gave her loud gave her screaming and she took it.
And now Chrissy knows her mother was right because Chrissy took it and Chrissy knows now that she never took anything from anyone not her parents not Jason don’tthinkaboutJason not any of the people she called her friends because she didn’t want it.
i don't want you to go
he didn't. he made her laugh but she went he made her laugh and she didn't even get to say thank you before she went EddieEddieEddie too loud too tall too much too much too real she wanted him to stay wanted to take just a little bit more and let it melt in her mouth she wanted just a little just enough to be a real girl she didn't want him to go but she would only take a little she promises she promises she wouldn't have done what was done to her
“Chrissy?”
me.
The world comes back into focus and it’s Eddie’s hand, rings catching the light. It’s hovering over her leg, not quite touching,
[choke, guttural,
animal
pig
is this what it sounds like when you
gut them
His hand on the back of her head, shaking as the bone slides back into place.
Eddie’s breath sticks in his throat, wet, and the next sound out of his mouth is wordless, animal terror sorrysorrysorry she’sso sorry
He curls around her, his hair falling she can’t see the rotting, rending-apart world around them through the dark mass of it just Eddie there’s just Eddie, the sweat-leather-fear smell of him between her teeth]
and Chrissy wants to laugh until something tears again in her throat.
Eddie Munson is a good boy.
The thing that used to be Chrissy Cunningham is learning she isn’t as good a girl as she hoped to be.
“I wish I’d gotten to see it,” she says, greedy, greedy. When she meets his eyes, he’s staring at her like he did at the picnic table, like he can’t piece her together.
“Guess I’ll have to give you an encore, then.” He tries a smile, his hand falling to his own leg. “Or something different, if you want. Doesn’t have to be Metallica.”
“No,” Chrissy says, too quick. Eddie tilts his head, something flickering in his eyes, and she’s terrified of what he’s seeing. She swallows, thick, and tries again. Softer. “No, I want it to be exactly what you played.”
She watches the line of his throat as he swallows alivealivealive nods. “Whatever you want.”
Fold it up neat, tuck it away.
“You know,” he says, slow, “the Hideout invitation stands indefinitely, once Corroded Coffin’s regularly scheduled programming resumes.”
Five drunks, and the rest of the band. She’d have to share it with all of them.
Her hands ball up in her lap, and she tries not to pick at her nails. She doesn’t want to tear pieces out of this body bit by bit. She doesn’t want Eddie to have to see any more of her raw and bleeding than he already has.
“Have you played it before? At the Hideout?” she asks, and knows it’s a mistake, knows she shouldn’t ask questions when she doesn’t know if she wants the answers.
He shakes his head. “No time. I’d just cracked it right before… before break.” He swallows. “You, uh,” his eyes flick away, and then back to her, “you got the world premiere.”
Chrissy, this is for you.
Chrissy winds her arms around her stomach and squeezes tight, tight. “Oh.”
He picks at the last threads straining across his knee, his leg jumping. “Spent hours trying to learn it, so I thought that if I only had one last chance to play…” He shrugs. “I’d at least give Henderson something cool as hell to remember me by, if shit went sideways.”
[ Steve lurches against the tentacles pinning him, screams, “Munson!” but Eddie is already moving, slamming his shield against the rush of teethhungryempty more and shoving Dustin behind him as the first of the swarm lurch up the stairs.
Dustin’s voice, hoarse and terrified , “Eddie!”
You, says the devil, pouring down the back of her throat like mud, like gravedirt, and he almost sounds surprised, and Chrissy can’t move screaming Chrissy tastes blood that isn’t hers in a mouth that isisn’t hers she's going to taste it when he dies greedy girl greedyawfulgirl she wanted just a little and now she's going to get all of him she's sorry ]
She reaches her hand out and rests it on top of his. His leg goes still.
He’s warm. It was the first thing she ever knew in this body, hands shaking against her still-cleaved skull her caved-in ribs and leather and warm.
“I’d like to go,” she says. “Whenever you play again.”
Eddie says nothing. Eddie is staring at her hand. She reminds herself to breathe deep and slow.
The first night she couldn’t, voice shot from screaming but she still tried, and Eddie shookshookshook as he held her on what they thought at the time was a dead man’s mattress. He said her name, over and over, said he was sorry. When she stopped, he buried his face in her hair and made a noise that nobody should make, that the boy who made a dead girl laugh should never have to make, and Chrissy was sorry, then.
So Chrissy breathes deep, and slow.
“I wanted to,” she says, because he’s given her so many nice things she’s scared to touch any of them and she wants him to have something nice, too, or maybe she wants space in his head, maybe it’s still a gift for her, “when you asked me the first time.”
His hand twitches under hers. His rings are digging into her palm, a little. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t hurt, and even if it did it would be a hurt she was choosing, so that she could sort of hold Eddie Munson’s hand. If she told him they hurt, he would take them off. She knows all of these things are true, this body knows it.
“Eddie?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you think,” she starts, but she can’t pull the rest of it up her throat.
Is it greedy if she thinks it would make him happy, too?
He lifts his eyes up to hers. “Do I think what?”
pig
One of Eddie’s rings is a pig. The one he gave to Max to give to Wayne, so he’ll know she’s telling him the truth. The bare knuckle it used to sit on is nudged up under the second joint of her middle finger.
“Chrissy,” he says, but it’s not really a question, or anything at all. It’s just her name. Maybe it’s a door, too, if she wants it to be.
“It might take a while for the Hideout to open again.”
“Yeah,” Eddie says, his gaze steady on her. “It might.”
“Do you think I could watch you play, before that?” she asks. “Could I watch you practice, maybe, since you’ll be doing that anyway? I promise I wouldn’t distract you.”
Eddie’s eyes light like a match.
“Henderson’s going to bring me my goddamn guitar,” he says, and his grin slices clean across his face.
She chokes a laugh. “Eddie!”
“What?”
“We’re -- we’re hiding.”
He cants his head to the side. “So I can’t blow the roof off this shithole and play you Master of Puppets again at full fuck-you-Vecna volume? Well goddamn.”
“Eddie,” she says, but he’s happy, she made him happy.
“I have an acoustic,” he says, barking a laugh at her expression. “What? Gotta learn the chords somewhere; I can’t lay hands on my baby until I’ve got it down right. She’s a lady, Cunningham, come on now.”
Chrissy’s arm tightens around her middle.
“Gonna need her to join the party, though, and soon.” Eddie nods to himself, and she can already see the plan spinning out behind his eyes. “I’ll get him to bring both. Kid’s crafty as shit, he’ll find a way. Between him and Wayne and Harrington they can get it done quick before anybody starts asking questions.” He slaps his free hand against the floor in a rapid-fire beat, his whole body buzzing. “Who says her evil twin sister gets to have all the fun?”
“Didn’t we just agree you can’t blow the roof off?”
He snorts. “She’s not coming over for campfire songs, Cunningham. I’ve been thinking about it since we got here -- I’m not facing up to whatever crawls out of that pit without her.” His gaze meet hers, and for a moment all the fire and the thrill drains out of his face, something dropping out behind his eyes. “I didn’t know what to do, last time. Now I do.”
Eddie? Did you find it? Eddie?
A door, but not one he’d opened for her.
She shudders. She remembers to breathe.
“Eddie,” she says, very softly, but he shakes his head.
“Call it insurance,” he drawls, looking away. “Emergency use only until we’re free and clear of this bullshit.” After a moment he glances back, and like a flipped switch he reappears back behind his own face, fingers tapping out a rhythm on the floor. “So is… is that good? Does that work for you? Won’t be nearly as metal as what you heard, so I’d manage expectations if I were you -- but it’s something to listen to that won’t get us in too much shit.”
“Hopper still won’t like it,” she warns. Any amount of unnecessary noise isn’t exactly part of the laying low plan the four of them have as two fugitives and two meant-to-be-corpses, and she doesn’t think that their taste in music is where Jim Hopper and Eddie Munson are finally going to find common ground.
“Hopper can go to hell,” Eddie says, and he’s looking at her and his leg is jumping under their hands and she’s thinking hellfire, she’s thinking about how the very last thing he looks right now is bored, “it’s conveniently located just down the hill.”
“Eddie,” she says, but she’s not trying very hard to talk him out of it. Greedy. His music pulsing through every part of her and she still wants to hear it again, wants to watch him.
“I can play a little quieter, it doesn’t always have to rip a hole through dimensions.” He grins, then, sharp and wild. “There’s a literal cloud of doom hanging over our heads, Cunningham, I want my guitar. I wanna play for you when I know you can hear me.”
if shit went sideways
Something clenches cold in her stomach.
“And again at the Hideout,” she says, because she needs to hear him say it. She needs him to promise. He promised they were safe and now they’re here, so she needs him to promise.
He laughs, all teeth. “And again at the Hideout, every Tuesday until you’re sick of it,” he says, “and at the Garden, every time we swing through New York.”
We means the band. We has to mean the band, but he’s looking at her.
“Front row, Cunningham,” he says, drawn out like he thinks she needs to be coaxed, and she feels the drawers in her head straining, too full to close. His thumb slides up to press the side of her hand, just for a second. “And the second I can make some real fucking noise in this town without getting arrested, I’m giving you a real show, princess.”
me.
She could break the word up into little pieces, and there still wouldn’t be enough room.
When she says, “Okay,” there’s a crack in it.