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“Chrissy! Behind you!”
Chrissy could just make out the rasp of Eddie’s voice over the sound of flapping wings behind her. Turning on her heel, she saw the blur of the bat-like creature just before it struck. Wrestling with her foe, she managed to throw the winged thing to the ground. Its tentacle-like tail wrapped around her wrist, keeping her from stabbing it with her serrated hunting knife. She lifted up one foot and brought it down with a growl. The bat’s faceless head gave way under her sneaker with a sickening, wet crunch. Her cheer uniform socks, which hadn’t been white in a long time, were splattered with dark, viscous blood.
“Thanks, Eddie!” she called. She could just make out the white line of his grin before he whirled around to fight off a bat of his own, maneuvering it with a length of steel pipe so he could crush it between his trash lid and the side of a building.
They worked together to take down the small flock of… what did Eddie call them? Demobats, right? Right, that was it. Finally, the sound of wings was gone; all that remained was the sound of the two of them panting for breath.
“Are there…” she gasped, bent over with her hands on her knees. “Are there any more?”
Straightening up to his considerable height, Eddie scanned the sky for more bats. To Chrissy, it was all just a dark blur interrupted by occasional flashes of red. When she asked Eddie to describe it to her, he said that the sky was a thick layer of roiling black storm clouds, and that the red flashes were lightning. She couldn’t distinguish the dark shapes of bats among the storm-black clouds, so it fell to Eddie to be the lookout.
While he did that, Chrissy leaned heavily against the side of a nearby building, rubbing at her stiff joints. Her bones and muscles ached every day - a constant, dull, throbbing pain that had been with her since the day she’d woken up here in the Upside Down, tentacles sliding wetly off her body. She could still vividly remember the feeling of her bones crunching back into place, knitting themselves back together wrong so she looked like a broken marionette glued together by an amateur repairman.
The pain reminded her of her grandfather, who always complained of stiffness and joint pain on rainy days. Chrissy wondered if her pain would go away if the swirling miasma of clouds cleared from the sky overhead.
Not that it mattered. The sun never came out in the Upside Down. For all she knew, the sun didn’t even exist here. For as long as she lived… if she really was living… she would never feel the warmth of sunlight on her face again.
“No sign of any bats. I think we got ‘em all,” Eddie croaked, rubbing at the thick scar tissue at his throat. He looked at her. She couldn’t see his face clearly, not even at this small distance, but she could tell by his posture that he was frowning. “You okay? Joints sore?” he rasped as much as his ruined vocal cords allowed.
“A little,” she admitted. She stopped rubbing at her aching shoulder, not wanting to worry him. Instead, she changed the subject. “Is it just me, or are the flocks of bats getting bigger?”
“Yeah, no, they are,” Eddie agreed. “Couple months ago, you and I were fighting off maybe five at a time. This time there must’ve been… what, twelve, fifteen?”
“Something like that.” An unsettling feeling weighed in the pit of her stomach. “So… does that mean…”
He nodded. “Vecna’s regrouping. Probably only a matter of time before he plans his next attack on Hawkins. Things’re probably gonna get rougher from here on out, sunshine.” Despite the nonchalance in his tone, she could hear the slight quaver of fear underneath.
Chrissy’s face heated, and she bit her lip around a shy smile. No matter how many times he’d called her that in the months since they’d found each other in the Upside Down, both bearing the physical and emotional scars of what this ruthless world had done to them, she never got sick of hearing him say it. She hoped she never would.
Pushing off from the wall she leaned against, she walked purposefully toward the man she adored and took his hand in hers. He adjusted their grip so their fingers were interwoven. “Whatever happens, we’ll be ready,” she said softly.
“Yeah, we will,” he agreed, offering her a brave smile. He bumped her shoulder with his. He had to bend at the knees to do so. “C’mon. Let’s see what Henderson left us today.”
Hand in hand, they walked the twistedly familiar landscape of Hawkins. Eddie kept a sharp lookout - both for demobats above, and tripping hazards below. The dim light of the Upside Down made it hard to see even in the best circumstances, and Chrissy’s eyes were no longer at their best.
Eventually, they came to a fault line in the ground: one of four, all leading to the center of town. From what they’d learned from Dustin in the other world - the real world - those lines were covered in moldy, half-rotted vegetation. The opposite was true here; along these lines, grass and plants grew. They were faded, stunted shoots of greenery, pale as worms from the lack of sunlight, but they were alive. A little reminder that home was still out there, even if… even if she could never go back.
They kept a careful ten feet away from the fault line as they followed it. As always, Eddie placed himself between Chrissy and the blurring boundaries between the Upside Down and home. His shoulders were a tense, unyielding line.
They’d tried to cross over, once. Eddie had managed no problem, but when Chrissy got within a foot of the sickly green grass, her skin had started to wither and her bones felt like they would snap in half all over again.
Eddie had crossed right back over, pale as a sheet as he pushed her away from the crack in the world. He’d watched, babbling in horror as her flesh smoothed and filled out once more. When she promised she was alright, he’d grabbed her and yanked her into a crushing embrace. Every last muscle in his body was trembling.
It made sense that she couldn’t go back, she guessed. Here, she had a solid form, but in the real world, her body was dead and buried. She was trapped here for as long as she lived. If this really was living.
Eventually, they came to their destination: a trailer fortified with chainlink fence and slabs of scrap metal. Eddie’s trailer. The place where she’d died. The sound of music, vague and distorted, came from within. Eddie had told her once that it was Weird Al. She took his word for it.
Not for the first time, Chrissy’s throat tightened with guilt. This was the place where it had all started. Where her life ended, and Eddie’s life had started the freefall to the madness that had led him here. If he’d never agreed to sell to her… if he’d met with her anywhere else… his life would be infinitely better. He’d have graduated - she just knew it - and gotten out of Hawkins. Those big dreams of his would’ve brought him to a big city to match - New York, or LA, or somewhere where he and his band would make it big.
Instead, he was here. Trapped in a hellscape with only her for company. The entire world at his fingertips if he crossed over, barred from him by accusations for murders he didn’t commit. Starting with her own.
“Do you ever regret it?” she blurted before she could stop herself.
He glanced at her curiously. “Regret what, sunshine?”
She winced. This question had been plaguing her since the moment they’d found each other. But she could never bring herself to ask before now. She dreaded the answer too much.
Still, she had to finish what she’d started. “Do you ever regret… y’know. Meeting me in the woods that day? Selling to me?”
He stopped dead and circled around to her front. His hands clasped her shoulders, and he bent down low so he could look her in the eyes. This close, she could almost see his face clearly. He looked at her in that same quiet, measuring way he always did when she said something that surprised him. Like he had that day in the woods, months ago, when she’d begged him not to leave her alone.
“I regret a lot of stuff,” he finally said. “Like not telling Wayne how much I appreciated him putting up with my crap over the years. And that time I sold hairsprayed weed to Billy Hargrove and he kicked the shit outta me; I definitely regret that.”
She slapped his arm with a giggle. “Be serious!”
“I am serious! I had a black eye and a busted lip. Fucker nearly broke my nose,” he said with a grin. His smile faded, softened into something that made her heart melt in her chest. He ducked his head, hiding his face in his hair. “But I’d say my biggest regret would have to be innnn… eleventh grade, when I didn’t have the balls to talk to that cute ninth grade cheerleader and ask if she remembered me,” he admitted.
“It is not!” she said, grinning.
“It is!” he insisted. He sobered. “Look… I can’t lie and say this is how I pictured my year would go. When I said I wanted to get the hell outta Hawkins… well, this isn’t exactly what I had in mind.” He shrugged. “But hey - I’m dating the hottest chick in the whole Upside Down, I’m the world’s most famous rockstar, and nobody here calls me a freak. I’ll take that as a win.”
“Flatterer. But you’re wrong about one thing: you are a freak.” Snagging the front of his Hellfire T-shirt, she tugged him down for a kiss that he happily returned. When they parted, she didn’t even have to open her eyes to know that he was wearing a shit-eating grin. “But you’re my freak. Now go on, go see what Dustin brought us.”
Eddie offered her one last peck before bounding off to the trailer like a hyperactive golden retriever. Chrissy watched with an affectionate smile as he disappeared inside. She couldn’t blame him for being excited. It was nice that Eddie had someone to talk to who wasn’t her.
Sometimes, she envied him. It would’ve been nice if someone from her old life wanted to see her. But even if she could go into the trailer without risking her life, she couldn’t think of a single person from home that she’d want to see.
No, this was for the best.
From inside, she could hear Dustin’s distorted voice. From what Eddie told her, the boy stayed on the other side of the portal, and they communicated through some means Chrissy didn’t quite follow, which seemed to somehow involve a Lite Brite.
This had become part of their routine. Every few days, Dustin would go to Eddie’s trailer in the real world and play Weird Al music to signal to them that he was there. Eddie would go inside, where the two of them would exchange intel on what was happening on the other side. Dustin would throw a bag of supplies to Eddie through the crack, and the two would part ways.
Chrissy waited outside nervously, straining her ears for any sign of the demobats. As grateful as she was to Eddie’s friend for helping them, she hated being left alone out here while they caught up. With her half-blind eyes, she wouldn’t be able to see the bats - or worse, dogs, or worse still, the man-sized ones - until they were basically on top of her.
But luck was on her side; Eddie came out after a few minutes, arms laden with paper bags as usual. “What did he give us this time?” she asked
Eddie grinned. “Some beers, some sodas, and… apparently Henderson stole a whole damn loaf of banana bread from Wheeler’s place. God, I can’t wait to eat something that didn’t come from a fucking can!”
Chrissy couldn’t blame him. Food didn’t last long here; plants didn’t grow, and anything fresh that Dustin sent over would be rotten and moldy in a handful of hours. The only thing they could find plenty of was canned food: in homes, at the convenience store, in the supermarket. Eddie had been living off of Spaghettios, soup, and whatever food Dustin scrounged up for the last six months.
And as for Chrissy… well, she’d quickly discovered that she didn’t actually need food anymore. Which made sense, she guessed, considering she didn’t seem to have a real body. Nobody knew exactly what it was that was keeping her “alive.” Maybe it was Vecna, or the Mind Flayer. Maybe it was something to do with this place. Whatever it was, something was sustaining her, and she wasn’t about to question it.
Still - she liked to eat when Eddie did. It helped her feel like she was… normal, instead of whatever the hell Vecna had made her. And she had to admit, the thought of biting into a sweet slice of banana bread made her mouth water.
They hurried across the dark, twisted landscape, picking their way over black vines like a hellish game of hopscotch. Eventually, they got to their destination, their makeshift home: a small house in one of the nicer parts of town, as far from the fault lines between the worlds as the two of them could get. Together, they went to the kitchen and put away the supplies, stacking cans neatly in cabinets and exchanging soft glances. It felt… nice, domestic, to be putting food in cabinets. In the quiet moments like these, they could pretend they were a normal couple just getting home from the grocery store.
It would’ve been charmingly domestic if it weren’t for the thick darkness, the strange dust particles, and the black vines they had to beat back with axes and fire, day after day.
When they finished, Eddie grabbed the foil-wrapped loaf of banana bread. Eager fingers unwrapped one end, tore off a corner, and popped it into his mouth. His eyes rolled back in bliss.
“Fuck me, that tastes just like home,” he rasped, sucking the crumbs off his thumb.
Chrissy hopped up to perch on the kitchen counter, kicking her feet slowly. “Did you have banana bread a lot back home?”
Eddie snorted. “Nah. Wayne’s a good guy and all, but Betty Crocker he is not.” He broke off another corner and offered it to her. She shook her head. Shrugging, he ate that, too. “How ‘bout you, sunshine? You have stuff like this back home?”
“Um… no.”
The truth was, there was never anything like that in the Cunningham household. Laura Cunningham’s idea of dessert was a small cup of fruit salad to reward Chrissy on the rare occasion when she pleased her mother. “Just a taste, dear. Don’t want that sugar going to those hips.”
“Hey.” The rasp of Eddie’s voice and the warmth of his hand on her shoulder pulled her from those thoughts. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to… you know.”
She offered him a sweet smile. “I know.”
Rising up on tiptoe, she wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him down from a kiss. Her tongue swept at the seam of his lips, begging for an invitation, which he happily gave. He tasted like banana bread and Eddie - sweetness and comfort and home in a way that shouldn’t be possible in this hellish world. But as Chrissy had learned over the past months, Eddie Munson wasn’t the type to let the world around him dictate who he was. Small town, big city, nightmare hellscape - no matter where he was, Eddie would always be Eddie.
When his hands started to wander, palming at her ass, she pulled away reluctantly. “As much as I want to,” she murmured against his lips, unable to resist giving him a few more sweet, lingering pecks, “we are both gross right now.” She nodded significantly down to their clothes, which were grimy with sweat and demobat gore. “Why don’t we get clean before we get dirty?”
With a pout and an exaggerated sigh, Eddie let her go. “Fine, I guess we could do that,” he agreed. “But you’ll have to make it worth my while.”
Instinctively, Chrissy’s stomach clenched. Make it worth my while. It was a refrain she’d heard often enough from Jason, and it always meant the same thing. Whether she asked him to sit through a chick flick with her, or drive her to the mall, or forgive her for not showing up to a team event, the price was always the same.
Chrissy didn’t mind sex with Jason. She even liked giving blowjobs, sometimes. But turning it into a transaction, into payment for services rendered, made her feel dirty.
But Eddie wasn’t like that. He might be singing a similar refrain, but it was to a completely different song. One she was happy to listen to.
“Oh yeah?” she asked, hooking a finger in one of his belt loops. “And how’s that?”
“You’ve got to let me eat this banana bread in bed. Seriously, if it gets all moldy I will cry. And I’m not talking a few manly tears. I will weep openly. I will be a man broken by the cruelty of fate. I will - “
“Okay, okay!” she laughed. Rising up on tiptoe, she planted a kiss on his grinning mouth. Or, she tried to; the adrenaline from fighting off demobats finally wore off, leaving Chrissy stiff, aching, and drained. Her knees buckled and one of her ankles rolled.
Eddie caught her effortlessly, just like he always did. “Okay, okay, I’ve got you. Message received.” He hoisted her up, his hands bracing thighs too weak to wrap around his waist. Chrissy draped her arms limply over Eddie’s shoulders and let herself be carried. She knew better than to push herself when her body’s strength ran out.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered into the side of his neck.
“Nothing to be sorry about,” he rasped easily. He shouldered her weight just as he’d done dozens of times before, leaning back as he walked so she could rest her weight against him. Taking the stairs two at a time, he carried her to their shared bedroom and laid her gently down on the bed.
“Ready to get cleaned up? Or do you need a sec?” he asked.
“I’m ready,” she replied, propping herself up on her elbows.
“Cool. You get started. I’ll be right back up.”
Once he was gone, Chrissy shimmied out of her clothes without standing. She’d pushed herself too hard today. Her muscles were already starting to cramp from overexertion, and she knew her joints would be locked up tomorrow morning. But there was no helping it; Vecna’s army of monsters was multiplying, and Chrissy refused to let Eddie handle them by himself.
Rolling over to the side of the bed, she grabbed the jug and washcloth waiting on the nightstand. Getting clean in the Upside Down was an undignified process. Sure, there was a bathroom with a shower just down the hallway - but no electricity or running water. They had to make do with bottles of water stolen from the grocery store to give themselves daily sponge baths. And twice a week, at Chrissy’s insistence, they’d wash one another’s hair in the kitchen sink.
Once she was nude, she wet a washcloth with water and started wiping herself down. Face first, then hands - the parts spattered with the worst of the monster gore. Then torso, arms, and legs, taking time to rinse the rag between each part.
It felt good to be clean. Not as good as a hot shower, of course, but just the act of wiping the sweat and grime off her skin made her feel a little more human and a little less… whatever she was.
The only place she couldn’t reach was her back. Once, she could have easily reached her entire back with flexibility to spare. But now, her broken, mismatched joints wouldn’t move that way.
But as always, Eddie was there to do for her what she couldn’t do for herself. He appeared in the doorway, loaf of banana bread in hand. Wordlessly, he put it down on the nightstand. He took the washcloth from her hand and slowly, reverently wiped her clean. Every pass of the cloth was followed by a caress of his hand. If she didn’t know better, she’d say he was checking to make sure she was clean. But she knew that he touched her for no other reason than he wanted to. To make sure she was still there with him.
Once she was clean, it was Eddie’s turn. She helped him strip more by feel than by sight, pushing the olive green vest off his shoulders and unbuttoning his jeans just like she’d done dozens of times before. While he worked on getting himself clean, she busied herself by detangling his hair with her fingers. Of all the supplies Dustin had brought, a comb had never been one of them. And while Chrissy’s straight hair was easy to maintain, Eddie’s wild mane of curls was as big and messy as his personality. The first time he’d noticed a fist-sized knot on the back of his head, Chrissy had to stop him from hacking it off with a knife. Ever since then, ridding him of tangles had become her chore.
In truth, this was her favorite time of day. She hated that she could hardly see his smiles, his tears, how he looked at her when they made love. But when she did his hair, she could let her other senses take over where her vision failed. She could feel the warmth of his skin where she pressed her breasts to his back, and the texture of his rough curls in her fingers. She could breathe the scent of him. She could listen to his quiet moans as her fingers combed through his scalp. And she could taste him as she pressed gentle, open-mouthed kisses to the scar at his throat.
Eddie hated that scar, she knew - that one, the one on his chest that had taken his nipple, and the one on his stomach. In them, he saw terror, pain, and proof of his own cowardice. It had taken him weeks not to hide them from her curious fingers. When he finally showed them to her, he joked that at least one good thing came out of her near-blindness - she didn’t have to see how ugly they were.
Chrissy disagreed. Even if she had an eagle’s sight, she wouldn’t see ugliness in his scars. They were proof that he’d healed - proof that he lived. To her, that made them beautiful.
Once he was clean and his hair detangled, Eddie guided Chrissy to lie back on the bed.
“Where’s it hurt most, sunshine?” he croaked.
Everywhere, she wanted to say. Her ankles cracked with every step. Her arms were aching, her thighs screaming, and there was a burning in the middle of her back that never went away. But if she asked Eddie to soothe every last one of her hurts, they’d be stuck in this bed forever. Not that she’d complain.
Still, she chose the spot that hurt worst. “Headache.”
“That again, huh?” he asked sympathetically. “Is it your neck, your jaw, or eye strain?”
“All of the above,” she admitted.
“Got it.” Grabbing a clean washcloth, he soaked it in cool water and laid it over her eyes. The cool dark brought immediate relief while Eddie worked the kinks out of her jaw the best he could. His fingertips moved with gentle familiarity, probing for knots in her muscles and soothing them away. Chrissy groaned low in her throat as he moved down to her neck, massaging the muscle while carefully avoiding the spot where her neck had broken.
Tears of relief dripped from Chrissy’s eyes and were soaked up by the cloth on her face. The pain she lived with wasn’t as bad as it should have been, considering the punishment her body had been through. But it was everywhere, and it was constant. Any relief at all was a miracle.
When his hands left her, she wanted to cry out in protest. Not just because he was taking her pain away, but because touching him made her feel more connected to him - more real.
Before she could say a word, his hand was on her arm, nudging her. “Flip over, baby. Let’s work on those shoulders.”
Normal, living Chrissy would have refused, made excuses for why she didn’t need it. Her needs were unimportant compared to others, after all. But she’d overdone it today. If he didn’t massage her cramping, rebelling muscles, she wouldn’t be able to get out of bed tomorrow. So she acquiesced and flipped onto her belly.
Eddie worked at her shoulders, pausing every so often to press a kiss to a crooked bone or misaligned joint. When he moved down to her mid-back, she couldn’t find it in herself to protest. As he manipulated her muscles in the way they’d learned over the past months, the burning and cramping faded, only to be replaced by a sweet ache between her thighs.
This didn’t happen as often as she wished. Between their dismal surroundings, her broken body, and the constant exhaustion from fighting off monsters, sex was a luxury they couldn’t often afford. But as Eddie’s calloused hands passed over the backs of her thighs, she found herself rocking into the mattress, seeking any friction she could get.
Slowly, she opened her legs.
Eddie’s hands froze on her legs. She heard him exhale shakily. One warm, rough hand caressed her inner thigh - up, and then down. “You sure?”
“Please.”
Sex was, in a word, complicated. Some days, they could do things more or less normally. All of the usual positions were more or less on the table, as long as they were careful; more than once, in the heat of the moment, Chrissy made a move that popped a hip or shoulder out of place, which sent her whole back out of alignment. The next day or two would be spent in bed recovering while Eddie kept watch for danger.
On days like today, when she overextended herself, normal positions like missionary or cowgirl were untenable. Her muscles were locking up even after Eddie’s caring massage. One wrong move would make them cramp painfully.
But months of trial and error had paid off. There was one position they could both enjoy on days like this.
While Eddie’s left hand still ran soothing stripes up and down her back, his right proved between her legs. He slid one finger teasingly up and down her slit, swearing softly.
“God, baby, how are you already so wet?” he muttered.
“You make me feel good. So good,” she breathed. When he spread her cheeks with his hands, moving to eat her out, she shook her head. She didn’t need it; just his hands on her, soothing her hurts, was enough. She was more than ready for him. Still lying on her belly, she arched her back enticingly. “Please, Eddie. I need you in me. Need to make you feel good, too.”
“Fuck. Okay, Sunshine. Whatever you want.”
The mattress shifted as he straddled her legs. He lined himself up and pushed slowly inside. Chrissy’s eyes fluttered as she felt the stretch, the fullness of having him inside her.
When he was in as far as this position would allow, he reached up over her head, where her hands gripped the sheets. His fingers threaded with hers. “This good?”
She nodded. “Uh-huh.”
Confirmation received, he began to rock in and out of her. In this position, his thrusts were shallow. But every movement of his hips pressed hers into the mattress, which more than made up for it. Chrissy sighed her pleasure into the pillow, rocking up against him with each thrust.
Eddie reached his climax before Chrissy did. It wasn’t surprising; his body, even with its scars, was more or less whole. Hers wasn’t. She had to be mindful of every move, had to focus on the pleasure even when pain was screaming to be heard.
But Eddie wasn’t the type to leave her wanting. He reached a hand underneath her to touch her, his fingers experimenting until they found a rhythm that made her breath catch. His hips matched that tempo, rocking into her even as he slowly softened inside her. Eventually, she shattered under him with a soft cry. And when she did, Eddie was there to hold her together.
Eddie collapsed on top of her, his chest to her back. He rolled them onto their sides, one arm still around her waist while the other still squeezed her hand. He buried his face in her hair. When he took a breath, it was shaky, and she could feel him trembling against her.
“Hey.” Turning over in his arms, she brushed sweat-damp curls from his cheek. This close, she could see his face clearly. His eyes were glassy and red, his brow knit. “It’s alright. I’m still here. I’m not going anywhere.”
She knew exactly what Eddie was feeling, because she felt it, too: guilt, and fear of being abandoned. Guilt for running away from her crumpled body, or for dragging him into this mess in the first place. Terror that he’d decide to go back to the real world, or that whatever spell kept her in this limbo would one day end.
For all of their differences, they truly were the same. So perfectly matched it was like they were made for each other.
When a tear rolled down his cheek, she swiped it away with her thumb. “Hey - no crying,” she scolded with a soft smile. “You only said you’d cry if that banana bread went bad before you could eat it. Which means this? Is cheating.”
Eddie let out a watery laugh. “You’re just trying to get some delicious banana-y goodness out of me. I’m onto you, Sunshine.”
“Guilty.”
Chrissy watched as Eddie rolled over and grabbed the foil-wrapped loaf off the nightstand. He broke off a chunk and offered it to her. She opened her mouth and took the sweet morsel, her tongue swiping over his thumb and forefinger to catch every crumb. Already, the loaf was starting to go stale. In ten more minutes, it would be rotten. But even in this dark, lifeless place, it was still a taste of something familiar - something soft and sweet.
They fed each other by hand until there was nothing left but hard, stale crumbs. After they were done, they lay in each arms, taking simple joy in being together. There’d be more excitement tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that. Quiet moments, they held onto with both hands. Apart from the constant on-and-off rumble of thunder, their breathing was the only sound in the room.
Actually, Eddie’s breathing sounded strange. It sounded wheezy, raspy, without its normal cadence. Concerned, she listened closer.
It took Chrissy a full minute to realize - he was humming! It was hard to tell; he had no voice anymore. Vecna had stolen the parts of themselves they valued most: Chrissy’s athleticism, and Eddie’s music.
“What are you humming?” she asked softly.
Eddie raised his head, surprised. “You could tell? I’m shocked. Astonished. And maybe just a smidge bamboozled.”
Chrissy slapped him playfully on the chest. “Stop stalling and tell me what you were humming!”
He snorted. “You asked for it. Get ready for the second most metal concert the Upside Down has ever seen.” With that said, he started to sing.
“Singing” was a generous term. There was no melody. Eddie’s ruined voice was far from musical; on the low notes, he croaked, and on the high notes, he rasped. And while his lips were curled in a self-deprecating grin, his eyes shone with sincerity.
“You are my Sunshine
My only Sunshine
You make me happy
When skies are black and cloudy and full of red lightning which is actually pretty fucking metal when you think about it even though it gets old after a while -”
She giggled. “You’re ridiculous, you know that?”
Making a show of ignoring her, he continued.
“You’ll never know, dear
How much I… love you…”
Chrissy’s heart leapt in her chest. Neither of them had ever used that word. What they had was as new and fragile as a newly hatched bird, and this world was cold and cruel.
“Eddie?” she asked, voice unsteady.
His grip around her shoulders tightened. “Please don’t take my Sunshine away.”
Taking his face in her hands, Chrissy lunged, kissing Eddie for all she was worth until they were both breathless. Only when her lungs were screaming did she pull back.
“I love you, too.”
Eddie was just as out of breath as she was. But even then, she didn’t miss his sigh of relief. “That’s all that matters, then. Vecna, the demobats, the Mindflayer - we’ll handle whatever this place throws at us. Together.”
“Together,” she agreed, taking his hand in hers.
They held each other until Eddie eventually slipped off to sleep. Not needing to sleep, Chrissy stayed up to watch over his dreams as best as her broken eyes would allow.
In the relative quiet, she reflected on her circumstances. She was dead - or something like it - after enduring months of mental torment. This nightmarish hellscape was her home for good. Her body was broken, her mind and spirit scarred. And yet, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d been so happy. The last time she was with someone who saw her for who she was and accepted her without question.
She could wish for better circumstances, of course. She could wish for Eddie to become a famous rockstar, for herself to be a model or a teacher or a florist or ten thousand other things. She could wish for a lazy Sunday watching TV, or a body that didn’t hurt with every wrong move.
But right now, this was what she had. One blessing that made all the aftermath of Vecna’s curse seem inconsequential. She could wish for better. But in this bed, surrounded in Eddie’s love, with the taste of banana bread still sweet on her tongue? She had no regrets.