Chapter Text
Here’s the thing.
Chrissy Cunningham felt herself die.
In Eddie’s castle, hands wringing and tugging to make sure her cheer sweater covered her bruised wrist, trying to think of reasons to stay with Eddie as she got high-
Chrissy died.
She felt the broken bones, the shattered jaw, the eyes that all but melted out of her sockets, fluids, and blood that dribbled down her cheeks and twisted jaw. She had tasted her own eyes, full stop, bright and penny-copper sharp, gooey, and thick saltiness on her flapping, lolling tongue.
She had felt how her body had just…
Broken, shattered, lost control which is so fucking funny because her mother tries so damn much to control her body. And even in death, she can’t control herself. She didn’t know when you died you peed and shat yourself. Sticky slick and caked all across her twisted, pretzeled legs. Dried and somehow scratchy even though she was dead. She hadn’t known that after hours, your body started to freeze, seize up like the worse cramp, and then bloat, swell like a balloon with the gas of her own rotting flesh, to the ever-present disgust of her mother, who cried in anger when she realized that Chrissy couldn’t be stuffed into the too-small dress she had brought the mortician. Because once again, even from beyond the grave, Chrissy was too much of a pig for Laura Cunningham’s taste. That she would have to be a closed casket, not her perfect coffin showstopper.
Chrissy shouldn’t know this.
Honest to God, she should’ve walked into the shadow of death, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
But the voice, the voice that promised with a croon to make all the pain go away-
Lied.
Because he instead took pieces of her, carved himself a hallow of her mutilated body, of her soul, and kept her locked, tied like a wild dog to the rotting flesh that she had been. Pulling, weeping, -trying, and tugging to get out. Ripping at herself inside out to try and escape.
All while he took and took and took and took and took from Chrissy.
And then…
Suddenly, she’s in Hawkins High. Standing at her? Locker, ajar, as if she’s getting ready to go to class. It’s different from what she remembers, there isn’t the obligated collage of different photos of Jason she had put together at her mother’s urging plastered on the door, and the small pile of collage brochures was gone.
It’s wrong, and the locker isn’t right off the gym like it was in her senior year.
She breathes.
She breathes through her lips as if she hadn’t just died. As if nothing of what she had just experienced was real.
She was losing her mind, but that was true even before she died and got stuck in a decaying shell.
She stares, eyes wide at the mirror in the locker, and sees her hair in french braids laced with little pink stain ribbons, longer than what she had, past her shoulders and towards her waist, and with pearls in her ears. She isn’t wearing her favorite necklace charm- the one with her little ‘86 charm- the one her estranged brother Tommy had sent her through the mail, like all of his presents, with a note ‘ This is your year, Missy Chrissy ’. In its place is a simple little jack’o’lantern charm, on the same fine, old gold chain she had been gifted by her Nana Iris… The charm is the one she usually wears for Halloween, vintage and small, which always made her mother purse her lips. But she can’t technically protest it because it was an heirloom.
She’s wearing her favorite blue eyeshadow, with big dolled eyelashes curled just so, a bright blush that doesn’t quite fit her complexion, that cakes over her freckles, and a shiny, shiny lipgloss that’s a bright bubblegum pink. She’s in a pastel pink pinafore, a cream cashmere turtle-neck sweater, with her cheer letter tied neatly around her shoulders. Too knew, not marked with her Captain’s patch. Tights the same color as her pinafore, and leather boots that are blindingly white are on her legs and feet, like she’s dressed for Autumn, instead of Spring. She’s wearing a backpack that she remembers throwing away.
Her hand is on the locker door, she realizes, with a hazy blink, and on her thumb, it was her favorite ring. A stupid little mood ring, too big for most of her fingers. She had found it- freshman year in the parking lot- adored it for the little bat wings steel band and the big, fake jewel that shifted colors. Jason had thrown it away, within like a week of dating at the end of junior year. He had bought her a cheap replacement, a band with hearts- that had turned her pinkie green, nickel plating on the band instead of the steel of her little bat. The fact she still had it told her she was suddenly a junior, somehow not dead again. She rubbed desperately at the mood jewel, chewing her lips and tasting the watermelon lip gloss she used to favor before her mother had insisted she switched to chalky, hot pink lipsticks. “Because lip-gloss is for children, Christine Elizabeth.”
She can admit it- Chrissy is confused and starts… Running, slamming the locker shut in panic. Because last time she stayed meek and afraid and barely moved at all before He got her- She’s just pelting down the hallway, pink backpack smacking against her back in a steady, hurting rhythm, but she’s running faster and faster and faster- vaulting over an overturned trashcan that causes some people to call out in alarm. Chrissy just runs harder. Her leather soles slapped harshly against the linoleum.
She realizes she’s running to something about a minute in. Because her heart is pounding, galloping-
But she also feels another heartbeat, steady, strong, calm, and an echo in her chest, nestled next to her own.
Her reason is more apparent once she gets to the front doors. There, standing at the entrance of Hawkins High is Billy Hargrove. One of the people that died at Starcourt Mall. She didn't know Billy Hargrove- much like she hadn't really known Eddie Munson to see he wasn’t scary at all. All she really knew about Billy is that he had been part of the basketball and swim teams, and one of the few that Jason hadn’t liked, for all that he talked about him after his death. He was the one most of the other cheerleaders had whispered scandalously about in the locker room, and the one that Vicki Carmichael said ‘ate you out like you were his favorite ice cream’, which had made Chrissy so uncomfortable, especially because Vicki had been staring straight at her, and the purity ring that she wore to fend off Jason with some unholy glee.
Grey eyes meet bright blue.
They both stare at each other. Chrissy's chest is heaving. Her too-small bra is pinching into her shoulders, constricting under her breasts and digging into her ribs. Her hair is dripping with sweat, with braids, and stray strands clinging to the side of her face and neck. She knows any makeup she’s wearing is dripping down her face as well.
His chest is heaving.
He’s standing stalk still in his boots, hands fisted, blue eyes wide. Billy takes the first step.
Chrissy takes another.
I know you, something in her screams, even though she really doesn’t know Billy Hargrove at all, just like he doesn’t know her. He takes another step, and Chrissy takes another. Suddenly, suddenly, they're running at each other, and Billy Hargrove is lifting her up. He’s taller than her, tall and strong, and he crushes her into his jean jacket and off-white button-up, and she’s wrapping her arms around his neck, his chunky necklace digging into her chest.
Something in her chest clicks, and they start to breathe together.
One.
Two.
Perfectly in synch.
“Who the fuck are you, bunny girl?” Billy drawls, and whispers, gripping her tightly. He smells like Irish spring soap, gum mint, and cigarettes. Something about that soothes down some of Chrissy’s frayed edges.
Chrissy bites her lips, clutching just as tight. Her arms start to tremble at the effort. He keeps holding her up in the middle of the hallway, crushed into him, and he’s trembling. And she is too. Faintly, Chrissy hears the whispers about little Chrissy Cunningham, junior varsity cheerleader, holding onto the new boy like a limpet. Legs locked around his waist. She doesn’t care.
I’ll bet they’ll call me a slut before first period.
“Chrissy. Chrissy Cunningham,” she whispered, back, face stuffed into his hair. That smells like cheap hairspray and head and shoulders.
“We died,” he rasps, “We fucking died, bunny girl.”
She nods. Sharp and holding back a sob into his neck. He swallows, his entire body tense even as he squeezes her tighter. It hurts. But Chrissy only buries her face deeper into the corded tension of his neck, and clutches at him.
“It’s 1984,” she responds back, “And we aren’t dead anymore .”
Billy slowly, reluctantly, lowers her back to her feet. He pulls away, just as slowly, but his hands, his hands that are so large- slide down her neck to rest on her shoulders. He’s suddenly beaming.
“Chrissy! Surprise ! I haven’t seen you since junior high!” he calls, cheerfully and dramatically.
It’s an act. He’s selling it like he’s she’s his best friend and they haven’t seen her in years. Chrissy is a cheerleader, and because of her mother- the best damn actress outside of theater class in Hawkins High history, she is sure. So she sells it back.
“ Billy ! You never told me you were moving to Hawkins!” she’s bubbly and bright, Prissy Chrissy all the way.
Billy squeezes her shoulders, in thanks, before his beam turns sly, a smirk.
“Gotta surprise my favorite pen-pal, don’t I?”
She giggles, sugar-sweet. He throws an arm around her shoulder, and she easily slides an arm around his waist.
“Show me around, will you, sweetheart? Starting today I’m a Hawkins Tiger,” he continues, even as he expertly steers her towards the office.
She beams.
“Anything for you, Billy!”