Your kiss, my cheek

The Upside Down/Hawkins, March 26, 1986

After talking with Dustin through Holly Wheeler's Lite Brite—which apparently was not an unusual means of communication for breaching the veil between Hawkins and the Upside Down—it was decided that they would try Fred's death site to get back home.

"If Patrick's dying opened a snack-sized gate, then Fred's should've, too. We just need to find it." Nancy was confident, but the tightness around her mouth and the steely glint of her eyes spoke more of concealed hurt than self-assuredness. It left Chrissy wanting to take her hand, to remedy it in some way, but she didn't. She and Nancy weren't exactly friends, this shared experience notwithstanding.

Honestly, she felt like a burden to Nancy and Steve, especially after panic attack over the vines. Robin seemed more empathetic. Still, she felt Eddie was the only one of the group she could actually rely on.

"We're going to be exposed the entire time, Nance," Steve pointed out. "Robin's got the flashlight and Chrissy's got that broken oar. We need more to deal with the bats. Plus, uh, how do you plan for us to get there quickly?"

"You might not have always had guns in your closet, but you've always had bikes, right?" Eddie asked. And so it was settled. There were five bikes in the garage—belonging to Mr. and Mrs. Wheeler, Nancy, Mike, and Holly respectively—but Holly's was too small for any of them to feasibly ride. Nancy gave her dad's bike to Eddie and Chrissy, so that Chrissy could ride standing on the pegs of the back tire.

Nancy led the way, having been the one to find Fred's body after Vecna murdered him. The thick air of the Upside Down left Chrissy's palms sweating on Eddie's leather jacket where her hands rested on his shoulders.

"What if the bats come back?" she whispered to him, looking around despite herself. They were exposed as their small caravan of bikes ventured down the replicated roads of Hawkins. Interestingly, the streets were bare of the vines. A small blessing.

"Then I'll pedal like hell back into the trees," Eddie reassured her. "Besides, with you riding on the pegs, they'll eat you before they can start nibbling on me."

"Ha-ha." Chrissy pinched his shoulder, making him turn to smile at her. A strand of curls whipped into his mouth, leaving him sputtering. She kindly helped him right it so he didn't have to let go of the handlebars.

The path Nancy took them on brough them within view of the Creel house. Through the trees, the dilapidated house stood under the red sky, a dense, screeching cloud of bats circling about the roof. A decent swathe of forest separated the five teenagers from the house, but Chrissy shivered in fear all the same. "I think that's where he is," she whispered to Eddie, dipping her head low beside his ear. Eddie's only response came in a nod, his face hardened as he glared at the house.

The gate was conspicuous once the right stretch of road was found. Just like the Watergate, the Tailgate—as Lucas had dubbed it—emitted a red glow. Hivemind vines wrapped all around it. When they went through, it would have to be done quickly, so as not to draw Vecna's attention.

"So, we'll just, uh… step through it?" Eddie asked, tone dubious as he eyed the Tailgate. Dustin and Lucas could be seen through the gate, their faces seeming to peer up at them through the garnet veil. "It's on the ground in Hawkins too, right, Henderson? We're not gonna fall from the sky?"

"I don't think so. I don't really understand the physics here. Oh! Hold on!" The boy disappeared from view, returning moments later with a large branch. "Here, tell me if it comes up from the ground or not."

Without an ounce of hesitation, Dustin thrust the branch through the veil. Steve took hold of it immediately, tugging it out of the younger boy's hand. "Okay, we got it. Now you tell us if it goes through the same way."

"Yup, yup. Whatever whack-ass physics are in play here, they're consistent. Okay, uh… someone stick their hands through? Me and Lucas will pull you out."

In the Upside Down, the teenagers eyed one another. None of them made a move toward the Tailgate, and it seemed like a stalemate was going to take place until, from the other side, Max said, "Chrissy first."

Though her stomach gave a hard twist of disgust at the thought of kneeling on the vines, Chrissy nodded. She tossed a look over her shoulder at Eddie. He tried to give her a smile despite the obvious fear on his face. It looked as if he were cast suddenly in black and white, his hair and eyes strikingly dark against his colorless cheeks. "Go, Chris."

With another nod, she steeled herself and knelt. The vines squished and writhed between her knees. Dustin smiled encouragingly at her from the other side. Screwing her eyes shut, Chrissy thrust her hands through. Moving through this gate was no different than the Watergate; no pain, no sound, really no sensation to alert someone that they had moved between dimensions. The only difference now was that she knew what was going on.

Rough blacktop soon replaced the feel of pulsing vines beneath her. Fresh spring air washed over her cheeks. She could smell the forest, the dirt and decay of leaves, could hear the whisper of night breeze through branches. Hawkins.

Robin came next, smiling wide with relief. She raised her hand for a high five after stepping back to make room for the next interdimensional traveler to come through. "Chrissy Cunningham one, Vecna the Tentacle Creep zero."

Chrissy managed to return the smile, slapping her palm against Robin's. "I never want to go back," she confessed. Robin blew her breath upward, sending her bangs ruffling over her eyes.

"How many bricks do you think we would have to drop in to close the gates? Or maybe we should hedge out bets and fill the whole damn place with concrete."

"We need to kill Vecna before we close the gates," Max reminded them. "He hasn't had any trouble being a pain in the ass without any gates to move through. He's just getting more powerful with every kill."

Though Chrissy knew that—had been able to feel it—hearing it voiced plainly took some of the wind from her sails. Surviving the trip to the Upside Down felt much less like a victory when it was painted in Max's gloomy rationality. The smile slipped from Chrissy's face, lips settling in a frown, as she watched Dustin and Lucas help Eddie topside. The former clapped Eddie on the shoulder, the two of them teasing each other.

"Alright," Eddie bumped Dustin with his shoulder, moving the smaller boy out of the way. "C'mon, Harrington. Your turn, big guy."

But as he crouched, Eddie's face sobered, brows furrowing together. "Harrington?"

"Nancy!" Steve's voice was the only part of him to breech the gate. "Nancy!"

"What's going on?" Chrissy asked. She made to step forward along with Robin, but Max caught her by the wrist. The younger girl gave a sharp shake of the head.

"Vecna's here."

"For Nancy?!" That couldn't be right. Not Nancy. There was no way Vecna could have chosen strong, confident, fierce Nancy Wheeler as a victim. "We have to help her!"

The problem was that it was music that they needed, and they were on an open, quiet stretch of road with only Max's Walkman and looped tape of Running Up That Hill at their disposal.

"Shit, shit, shit!" Both Eddie and Dustin cursed, nearly in sync with the other. Sitting beside the Tailgate, Dustin upended his backpack and started rifling through the contents. "What does Nancy even listen to?"

"We need music!" Robin dropped to her knees on the other side of Dustin's mess. "Madonna, Blondie, Bowie, Beatles?" There were a handful of tapes in Dustin's bag, but… "These are all blank!"

"Why the fuck do you have blank tapes at a time like this, Henderson?!" Eddie questioned. Not waiting for an answer, he turned back to the tailgate. "How's Wheeler?"

"Whatever you guys are doing up there, you need to hurry the hell up!"

"Benny's Burgers!" Chrissy shouted, drawing five pairs of confused, frightened eyes onto her. "It's not far from here, that's where the basketball team always throws their ragers. There would be tapes there! And the boombox!"

"She's right," Lucas threw in. He was already mounting his bike. "I'll go, I'll bring it back!"

"Wait!" Dustin shouted, only to throw his empty backpack at Lucas. It thumped him in the chest, one arm catching it on reflex. "Fill it up with all the tapes you find!"

It was far from a perfect plan, but it was the only one they had. Lucas had just began to pedal away in the direction of Benny's when a scream cut through the Tailgate and the night alike.

"NANCY!"

Nancy's scream, followed by the pleading shout of her name in Steve's voice, almost made Chrissy fall to her knees. She and Max clung to one another, their combined fear practically a miasma around them. But the terror soon melted away into tentative relief. "Nancy! Oh, Nancy, thank God!"

There was no crack of bones, no third gate ripping through the veil. The cold leached from Chrissy's spine. Vecna was… gone. He had let Nancy go.

For whatever reason, Nancy Wheeler was the first—and only—person they knew of to be grasped by Vecna and set free of the creature's volition.

None of them trusted it.

"Take her!" Steve's voice filtered through the Tailgate. A moment later, Nancy's head and shoulders appeared through the veil. "Get her out of here!"

Nancy was coherent, her eyes glazed and hazy, but not the horrible, fluttering, rolled-back eyes that Max had at the graveyard. She was limp as Eddie and Robin each took an arm, hauling her to sit on the road. Steve came on her heels, pulling himself through the gate unassisted. Though he was hardly clothed himself, wearing only Eddie's denim vest open over his torso, Steve was quick to wrap his arms around Nancy's shaking shoulders. "We need to get inside somewhere."

The answer to that was still Benny's Burgers. They moved in an amorphous mass, huddled together. Safety in numbers. Inside the mostly-abandoned building, the group stepped hesitantly over discarded cans and bottles, finding a section with seating comprised of old, worn out armchairs, a couch, and a love seat. Jason Carver and his cronies had been thorough in setting up their douchebag-y party pad, at least. Spreading around the seating options, the group hunkered down to listen to Nancy's tale.

"He showed me things that haven't happened yet. The most awful things. I saw a dark cloud spreading over Hawkins. Downtown on fire. Dead soldiers. And this… this giant creature with… a gaping mouth. And this creature wasn't alone. There were so many monsters," Nancy relayed to them haltingly, her eyes unfocused, as if she were still in the creep's headspace rather than her own.

That Chrissy was in awe the other girl had managed to walk away from Vecna without so much as a scratch was obvious. She was riveted to Nancy's story, hardly seeming to take notice of the fact that she and Eddie were sharing the love seat. The fact that Chrissy's thigh was pressed flush with his own was certainly not lost on Eddie.

"An army. And they were coming into Hawkins. Into our neighborhoods. Our homes. And then… he showed me my mom. And Holly. Mike. And they… they were all…" Tears were streaming down Nancy's face by this point. She scrunched her eyes shut against them, mouth twisting as she tried to compose herself.

Eddie was blaming his hyper awareness on Steve. Until their little chat in the Upside Down, he had been doing a great job of focusing more on the Vecna thing than he was 'the pretty cheerleader' beside him.

But all he needed was one look at Chrissy's pale, horror-stricken face to right himself again. Her shoulders shuddered as she took a deep breath. Was she thinking of her own little brother, his life turning from battling video game monsters to doing the same thing in real life? Or her father, the only parent he had heard her speak positively of? A cold fist of fear tightened around his own heart thinking of Wayne having to fight off monsters like those creepy-ass bats they had seen in the Upside Down.

"Okay, but… he's just trying to scare you, Nance. Right? I mean… it's not real." Steve ventured, voice striving for calmness. Despite his denouncement, it was clear he, too, was spooked.

"Not yet, but… there was something else. He showed me gates. Four gates, spreading across Hawkins. And these gates, they looked like the one outside. Where Fred died, but… they didn't stop growing. And this wasn't the Upside Down Hawkins. This was our Hawkins. Our home."

"Four chimes. Right?" Max asked, turning the question to Chrissy. "Vecna's clock always chimes four times?"

Beside him, Chrissy's head bobbed. "Four chimes," she confirmed, voice not breaching a whisper.

"I heard them, too," Nancy confirmed.

"He's been telling us his plan this whole time." Anger was clear in the jut of Max's jaw. There was plenty of fight left in that one. They would probably need it, if what Nancy had been shown came true.

"Four deaths," Lucas said softly, pointedly not looking at either Chrissy or Max. "Four gates."

Any further contemplation was interrupted by the sudden wail of sirens cutting through the air. With wide eyes, there was only a split second where the group looked at one another in renewed terror before they all threw themselves to the ground. Someone's knee—Henderson's—slammed into Eddie's calf. He grit his teeth to resist cussing at the kid, ears straining. The sirens drew closer, so loud he was certain there were squad cars pulling up outside the dilapidated burger joint. After several heart-pounding seconds, the sirens began to fade.

Beside him, a sigh slipped from Chrissy's lips. Eddie knew she was beside him, felt the shake of her shoulders, but had been more preoccupied with losing his shit over the fact he thought they were all about to be busted and have their plans interrupted. Now Chrissy pushed herself up, carefully maneuvering the mass of their bodies, and tiptoed across the room.

She returned with the boombox she had mentioned before just as all the others were righting themselves. Edging on the side of caution, none of them retook their seats, but rather formed a loose circle on the floor. Chrissy sat cross-legged between Robin and Eddie, flicking on the boombox and fiddling with a knob until she got it tuned to The Hawkins Beat, the local radio station.

"…sources confirm a third victim of the killer haunting Hawkins, identity currently unknown. Local PD have confirmed that the manner of the killing is consistent with the deaths of Fred Benson and Patrick McKinney. The body was found at Forest Hills trailer park within the last hour this evening."

An uneasy stillness settled over the group in that moment. It felt heavier than the concrete air of the Upside Down. Robin reached over and flicked the dial before the report could continue. White noise static filled the room instead for a few beats before Chrissy mechanically turned the boombox off and set it aside.

"Three deaths, three gates," she amended Lucas' earlier statement.

"Do you think he was looking for one of us?" Max asked. She and Chrissy were sitting outside Benny's Burgers, backs to the wall, cloaked in the uncertain gray light of a coming dawn. "For him to have been in the trailer park?"

Chrissy shivered, pulling her sweater tighter around her. "Maybe he was sending us another message." She didn't like the thought of it, but it was the only thought that made sense to her. "Any idea who it could have been?"

"Yeah, actually. Um, if I had to guess? Based on Vecna killing fucked-up teenagers? I… I think it was Sarah Thompson. Trailer across from mine, two down from Eddie's. Her mom committed suicide last year and her dad's an angry drunk."

"Sarah Thompson," Chrissy repeated, a tear streaming down her face for the girl who may have taken her place in Vecna's awful scheme. That singular tear quickly turned into several, streaming hot and fast down her face. She leaned her head back against the wall, letting the tears fall.

"Chrissy? Um, I thought you should know… your folks are looking for you. While you guys were in the Upside Down, we, um, got questioned by the cops. About where you two were. Jason Carver? He, uh, told the police that Eddie might have… kidnapped you… and kind of, like, insinuated that Eddie is involved with the murders."

The tears were still hot and thick on her cheeks when Chrissy glared up at the sky. "Of fucking course he did. Does Eddie know this?"

"I think Dustin's telling him." And Dustin must have, for a moment later Eddie burst through the back door of the restaurant. He looked flustered and frustrated, eyes lighting on Max and Chrissy in turn. The latter couldn't find the energy to react, though Max sprang to her feet, grabbing for her Walkman.

"Red, go inside. Uh, please." He tacked the end on after the command came out of his mouth as an acidic snap. The manners barely made a dent, but Max was quick to obey either way. Once her place beside Chrissy was vacated, Eddie fell heavily into it. "Hey, did she, uh…?"

"Tell me that we're basically the new Bonnie and Clyde?" Chrissy finished for him. The sour twist of his mouth quirked into an almost-smile.

"I was thinking more Hades and Persephone, considering the whole kidnapping spin your stupid ex-boyfriend put on it."

"Sorry about that," Chrissy told him, twisting her sweater sleeves and balling them into her fists. "I… don't know why he did that."

"Because he's a prick who can't conceive the concept that you would ever have the audacity to leave him, Jason Carver, god among the men of Hawkins." She was thankful that they both ignored the slight, hysterical edge to her laugh at his words. Above them, the sky was lightening, gray fading to blue.

"I think I'm Hades here," she corrected him. "You weren't going to jump in Lover's Lake if I didn't. You followed me into the underworld, not the other way around."

"Taking the first opportunity you have to promote yourself from a queen to a goddess, I see." He tipped his head to the side, so that his temple rested against hers as they watched the dawn. Several minutes passed where the only sound was the birdsong coming from the waking forest.

"Do you want to hear something really terrible?" Chrissy whispered the words, as if she might break the dawning day with her voice. "I was relieved when the third kill was announced on the radio. N-not that someone had died, of course, but… relieved that person wasn't me."

"It's not terrible to want to survive, Chris. I know you didn't want anyone else to die." He shifted again, this time brushing his lips across her cheekbone, featherlight. It made new tears prick at her eyes. "I'm relieved it's not you, too."