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consttellatio · 2 years

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Holy Diver (Chrissy x Eddie)

On the last day of her life, Chrissy rolls out of bed to the sound of Dio. A prequel to 'Leather and Lace.'

Read on Ao3

Trigger Warnings: Unhealthy/toxic parent-daughter relationship, unhealthy coping mechanisms, EDs specifically bulimia. Please do not read if this is upsetting for you. As someone who has used the techniques Chrissy uses please please please believe me when I say they do not work. They will only harm your body and create long-lasting problems in the future. Please look after yourselves and your bodies, you are made of stardust and cosmic life, don't let anyone treat you as though you are less <3

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On the last day of her life, Chrissy rolls out of bed to the sound of Dio.

Her bed is in disarray, another night of fitful sleep left all her pillows scattered on the floor. Her legs are tangled in silk sheets, her hair matted. She drags herself out of her mattress whining, her feet pale and tingling from no circulation.

For a moment she’s at peace, forgetting everything around her.

In this moment she’s just a girl. A girl who likes the feel of silk bedsheets under her skin. A girl who unapologetically likes to crack each bone in her body as she does her morning stretches.

She’s also a girl who apparently likes to be woken by the jarring sound of Metal.

She’s unfurling to the crescendo of drums, her wrists managing to click in time with the song.

‘Holy Diver, you’ve been down too long in the midnight sea. Oh, what’s becoming of me?’

She yanks herself up, the joints in her knees aching. Only eighteen and her body already feels as though it’s lived a hundred lives.

Cheerleading, she scoffs, cheerleading and insomnia.

As the circulation rushes back to her feet, the sound of scuffling comes from underneath her door.

A small note has been wedged through, folded neatly with the handwriting of her brother.

Stop music, please. Thanks.

P.s. Can you ask Jason if he can convince Mom to let me stay over a friend’s this weekend? Mom listens to him.

P.s.s I stole some of your records, you need better music.

Chrissy doesn’t know it yet, but her brother never ends up staying over his friends. She never knows if he puts her records back where he found them, or if he hangs on tighter to them on the night she never comes back. She doesn’t know that Jason does end up talking to her mother, however, it’s not about her brother. She’ll never know that they cry down the telephone line to each other, vowing for justice. She doesn’t know that he’s capable of misusing her name in order to inflict a man-hunt on an innocent person. She will never know that her mother would stand in front of all their family and friends, and weep for her. Instead of her usual antagonistic gossip and sharp words.

‘Got shiny diamonds like the eyes of a cat in the black and blue.’

Throwing the note onto her desk, she leans over to the radio, her finger resting above the power button. ‘Something is coming for you.’

That is the last time in this life that Chrissy Cunningham listens to music.

-o-

Five years ago, when Chrissy was thirteen, her grandparents took her on vacation to Mexico.

The tan she got from that holiday lasted years, and so did the wristbands they were given when they reached the hotel. She loved so many things about that resort, during the day lizards would come strolling up to you, as if they owned the place.

Nothing was better than the food, however.

Every day, Chrissy would stuff herself in the all-inclusive restaurant, filling up on sizzling sides and oozing sauces. Her grandparents laughed, asking whether her mother was feeding her at home.

When she did get home, she found that she could no longer fit into her cheer outfit. Or any outfit for that matter. She pulled, stretched and yanked, and when it was obvious that it was not going to budge, she sobbed.

She wailed so loud that her mother burst to find Chrissy half-naked and crumbled up on the floor.

‘It’s alright, mama’s got a secret,’ she whispered, before placing two laxatives in Chrissy’s hand.

You see, at the age of thirteen, her mother decided that Chrissy was someone you presented to people.

It isn’t until years later when Chrissy’s sat with stomach ulcers and abdominal cramps for hours on the toilet, that she realises her mother may as well have handed her cyanide.

Chrissy Cunningham might be a living, breathing human being, but she is not a person. Or at least, not one who is truly alive.

What Chrissy is, is an accessory. Someone you can carry around like a designer purse to make yourself look good. She’s all wide eyes, gentle smiles and soft edges to balance your sharpness out.

Her mother is all beautiful angles and sharpened eyes. She has cheekbones so finely cut that Chrissy often wondered if it ever hurt her to smile. Chrissy never inherited them, instead, she got her father's round cheeks that always made her look younger than her years.

She’s fair-haired and round-chinned. Sometimes she cries when she sees photos of that child, so wide-eyed and innocent. She took in everything with those eyes. Almost like a camcorder, her eyes recorded it all. The way Jonathon Byers got kicked in the face for being a bit ‘different’ from everyone else. How boys never looked twice or bothered with girls like Barbara Holland, how girls like Tammy Thompson could get everything as long as they batted their eyes.

They say you build your life based around the things you want to be. What Chrissy wanted was perfection. Perfection and control. Being perfect meant being untouchable, there is no critique in perfection. She can’t control the outfits her mother picks out for her, she can’t control her home life.

She can control her portions though. She can control skipping breakfast, she can control hopping on and off those scales every morning at 7 am. When she first spots cheerleading try-outs she laps it up, hungry.

She becomes twenty pounds thinner after joining. Her mom begins tightening her dresses instead of loosening them with impressed eyes and a pleased grin. In middle school, she’s untouchable; with bleached highlights, her first mascara wand and her mom’s laxatives hidden in her dresser for emergencies. Her life is great, she knows this because Jason Carver asks her to the Snowball, and Jason Carver doesn’t just ask anyone to the Snowball.

Then things start to change. Her body starts to change. Her mother never gave her “the talk”, so she learns through an awkward impromptu biology lesson from the school nurse what puberty is when she comes crying over the blood stains in her gym shorts.

She cries all the time over the next few months as her body develops and grows without her permission. Watches her mother pinch her face, all tight and screwed, as she hands her cheer uniform to adjust silently in shame when it’s time for her to start wearing proper bras. Picks at the curve in her hips, hoping if she squished them hard enough that maybe one day it would go back to how it was.

Control is fleeting, something that Chrissy learns the hard way. The only people who have true control over women’s bodies are the men in suits, the ones who dictate laws and the ones who control what body types are seen in the media.

But she’s thirteen and is too small and young to realise that it’s not her fault.

So when she’s fourteen, she starts using a toothbrush to bring back up her food. Mostly because she’s so used to using her fingers that they no longer work.

By fifteen, she’s using the ice cube method as a substitute for meals.

By sixteen, she’s back to being weight she was at thirteen. She tells herself that those little habits of hers were worth it to see her mother’s face light up at Chrissy being able to fit into her Homecoming dress first try.

At seventeen she’s got a stomach ulcer.

Now, at eighteen, Billy Hargrove's sister is at her cubicle door listening to the sounds of her retching asking if she's alright.

She ignores her and keeps retching.

-o-

There’s a boy on the day Chrissy dies, who’s sweet and terrified, but mostly terrified. Who tries his hardest to keep her alive.

He tries, tries so hard, keeps trying.

‘I actually… kind of thought you’d be kind of mean and scary too.’ ‘Me?’ She gasps, because Chrissy is so full of self-hate and insecurity that she never once conceived herself as a threat. They both have images to protect in a way, there’s a vulnerability in there somewhere she hasn’t quite figured out yet, Who knew poms-poms could be as intimidating as a pair of Doc Martins?

However… she supposes neither of them are innocent in that either.

Eddie spits, causes a scene and throws himself into the first chance of pissing people off who can make his life hell like it’s nothing. And when they do make people’s lives hell, because they always do, Chrissy turns a blind eye.

It just so happens that the kids Jason and their friends hate are made up of people whose existence is one that she’s comfortable in ignoring. It’s easy to turn a blind eye when you have every chance of being the next victim.

Over time, Chrissy decides it doesn’t matter who Jason torments, as long as it’s not her. Because selfishly it means Jason still likes her, and his approval means her High School survival. Eddie is similar in that sense, he’s more than happy to deny the existence of any person for the simple reason that they are not chain-wearing metalheads like him. He’s not particularly capable of being sympathetic or interested in anyone who does not resemble him or his ideals.

‘Terrifying,’ Eddie smirks, settling himself back down on the bench.

In another life, they might have called it ‘theirs’; their spot, their bench.

It’s not in this one.

-o-

‘So, when you get these thoughts,’ the guidance counsellor tells on the day she dies. ‘I want you to run yourself a warm bath, make yourself a nice cup of tea and put yourself into an environment where you feel safe and protected.’

How do you create a safe environment, when it feels as though the shadows have voices, and the walls have eyes? How are you not on edge, when the drilling of your mother's sewing machine is on repeat in your skull?

She thinks of that boy with the buzzcut in middle school, who when the other boys tried to bully him, hissed and spat before laughing in their faces.

She wishes she was that kind of brave.

-o-

If it’s any consolation, she doesn’t remember dying.

She doesn’t feel death wrap its hand around her limbs, lifting her higher and higher, squeezing her until there is nothing else her body can offer it.

She doesn’t feel or see much that night. She steps into the rundown trailer, nervously guided by Eddie, who can’t keep still for the life of him. He’s apologising; she’s not listening. He’s scurrying off into another room when death comes to collect its prize.

It swallows her whole, feeding and festering, waiting to take its claim.

Eddie runs in, shouting that he’s found it.

That is when death strikes.

-o-

An hour after she’s died, she’s laying alone, crumbled on the dirty ground.

Eddie’s gone, which shouldn’t sting the way that it does and yet, it still stings.

Chrissy is left to rot, left alone for the vultures to pick and caw at what was left. Left to be inevitably found by a stranger who has no idea who she was or how her body ended up desecrated on his floor.

She’s allowed to be angry about this. She’s allowed to haunt everyone who left her behind for it too. Her mother left her, she left her the moment she handed tablets that could break a child’s stomach lining into nothing, all to flush the softness of a thirteen-year-old’s belly out. Jason leaves her and returns like a customer who’s forgotten a piece of jewellery. He tries her on, showing her off to everyone adoring how she makes his reflection look in the mirror, only to shrink at the cost of what a unique jewel-like that brings. So he keeps her nice and tight in his pocket, only to forget her when something brighter and easier to maintain comes along.

Eddie leaves too - but it’s too raw to think about when she’s dead on his carpet.

They had all left her, doomed her in their own tortured ways. Let the beast torment and circle her before it devoured her whole.

But only one out of those three had stayed to hold her hand.

The trailer door swings open, and heavy boots freeze at the sight of her.

‘Chrissy?’ ‘Mmm?’ The dead girl mumbles back.

‘You alright down there?’ She rolls her body over to stare unblinking up at Eddie. ‘Why’d you leave?’ The boy straightens, eyes blinking before pulling a cassette out of his pocket.

‘In Middle school, you used to like Fleetwood, I had a copy in the car, I thought maybe you’d…’ Eddie trails off, almost embarrassed that he’s remembered such a small detail from a two-minute conversation they had when they were kids.

‘I was fine with Dio,’ she slurs.

‘Hey, are you alright? How’d you end up on the floor?’ He asks, coming down to her side. ‘I was gone two minutes.’ She stares up and for a moment swears she can see a crack in the ceiling, swollen and bleeding.

‘I think I died,’ she says slowly and then repeats: ‘I think I died. Is that, is that how it’s supposed to feel?’ ‘You mean like sleeping?’ Eddie asks, hoisting her up onto the couch. ‘Depends, how much have you smoked?’ She shrugs, slumping and nodding her head over to the box she ransacked. ‘I had another to myself.’

Eddie curses, and for a minute she thinks he’s going to kick her out just like how he threatened to leave their first meeting. A deep sigh comes as he rolls his hands over his face, thinking about what to do.

‘You smoked three joints? I’m assuming you’ve never even had a drag before tonight?’ She shakes her head which makes him whine. ‘Chrissy, c’mon… I don't like this. I told you I wasn’t going to sell anything harder to you for a reason. Why’d you do that?’

‘I wanted to forget, I wanted to not wake up,’ she whispers, her fingers tracing the air of where that festering crack should have taken her.

Do you remember how I told you of that boy? The one with the buzzcut who laughed and spat and sneered. The one whose hair grew out long and untamed, with permanent ink replacing the bruises on his arms. The one who came across as mean and terrifying because he couldn’t handle the vulnerability in weakness.

The one who threw himself off that bench just to make a sad girl smile? Did I tell you he stays?

-o-

Chrissy Cunningham is dead. Or, may as well be, because she has never truly lived.

She dies on that carpet and is brought back to life by two arms who ask her if she wants to talk.

She overshares and tells him she died in his arms, because until she sat opposite him on that bench she had never known life could be so free.

Tells him that him throwing himself off that bench to make her laugh was the weirdest thing anyone’s ever done for her. That him going out to get that Fleetwood cassette because he remembers how she did her middle school talent show routine to ‘Don’t Stop’ off Rumours was the sweetest thing anyone had ever remembered about her. Tells him how him pulling her from that floor, covering her with that blanket, and giving her space in case she felt uncomfortable was the nicest thing a guy had ever done for her.

‘You’re telling me that your boyfriend wouldn’t have done that?’ He asks in disbelief as he hands her water. ‘If Jason found me like that at a party, he would have had sex with me.’

Eddie’s jaw locks.

‘I… don’t like your boyfriend.’ Chrissy’s head lulls, her neck unable to support how heavy her head feels. ‘Join the club,’ she manages to mumble before her head hits the pillow. 'I'm sorry you've had a bad reaction,' he says, adjusting the pillow behind her head. He 'I'm sorry I raided your stash,' she weeps. All she does is cry these days, it's no surprise she's doing it here in front of him. 'I'm sorry I took advantage of your kindness, I'm really am sorry, I just-I just-' 'Shh,' he whispers before drawing her hand to his chest. 'Breathe with me, Chrissy.' 'I just don't want to be here anymore. 'I know, I know,' he says with a familiar pain in his voice. 'But you got to breathe with me first before we go into any heavy stuff, alright?'

Eventually, when her chest no longer feels as though it's caving and she can no longer see the crack in the sky that in another life offered her an end; she breathes.

She breathes and she overshares. She starts with her mother, about how she slices and cuts with words. Describes her nightmares where her mom guts her and slices all of Chrissy’s imperfections out of her flesh. How her father is absolutely having an affair, and her mother knows but pretends she doesn’t see. How her mother has no control over her life so she lives vicariously through her children. How her little brother’s favourite thing in the whole world are musicals, and how her parents won’t let him own or watch any in case it turns him ‘queer’. How Chrissy has a stash of the likes of Grease, Funny Girl and Rocky Horror for movie nights when their parents aren’t home. How she kind of does have friends, but also kind of doesn’t. She trusts them to throw her up into the air and catch her when she tumbles from the top of a pyramid, but she would never trust them with her secrets. How she’s purely an accessory to Jason’s life, a vintage wine you show off in your cabinet but never crack open.

When she’s finished, Chrissy is smiling at him. Brown eyes desperately search hers, widening with panic as her words sets in. The illusion of a perfect Chrissy Cunningham is cracked and splintered and she doesn’t know whether she wants to laugh or cry.

She chooses the latter, and when she sobers up she doesn’t remember how she came to be gathered in his arms. Her cheeks are wet with tears and his shirt is soaked, but Eddie’s still rocking her back and forth until she quiets.

‘Sometimes, I find watching cartoons help the comedown,’ he says after her crying has died down and it's safe to let her go. He lifts a VHS of Looney Tunes high, waving it from its place beneath a bong. ‘Promise you won’t tell anyone?’

‘As long as you tell me who your favourite one is,’ she sniffles. ‘Road Runner, duh,’ he inserts the VHS before launching himself onto the couch beside her. ‘You?’ ‘I tawt I taw a puddy tat,’ Chrissy impersonates, butchering the voice. ‘I did, I did! I did taw a puddy tat!’ ‘Please,’ Eddie grins, slowly his ringed fingers form a prayer and he bows his head toward her. ‘I am begging you to please do that one more time.’

Yes, Chrissy Cunningham dies. She dies when she realises there is much more to life than just surviving. She dies realising that the medicines mothers put in your hand and encourage you to swallow aren’t always kindness.

‘It’s official, you’re a freak,’ he declares, wagging his eyebrows as he throws popcorn at her face. ‘Welcome to your new life, Cunningham.’ Chrissy Cunningham Queen of Hawkins, the perfect accessory, died holding the hand of a boy who made her laugh.

Chrissy Cunningham, imperfect and free, is reborn in the arms of a boy who she cackles with when he calls her a freak. I rise, I rise, I rise.

When Chrissy’s world shatters, she wakes the next morning to the sound of Dio, and starts again.

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This is copied and pasted from my Ao3 so apologies if there are formatting errors!

Thanks for reading and giving your time to this fic. <3 Need you to know I've had that cursed tiktok audio stuck in my head where they've put the 'I DONT LIKE THIS CHriSsY wAkE UuUuUPpPPP' to music and now I can't rewatch that scene without pissing myself.

I'm going to be starting a series based around these two freaks trying to have a secret relationship, if you have ideas or prompts send them my way! I'd love to know how you'd think they'd work that out.

Here's a link to a playlist I made whilst writing this fic, for all your Eddie x Chrissy needs!

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