Chapter Text
As Hopper walked up the steps of the Byers’ porch he could hear the music before he reached the door. The heavy electric guitar and angry drum beats of some rock band from the 70s Hopper had never listened to during that decade rung through his ears as he walked across the threshold. He wasn’t sure when it was he’d began to enter the Byers household without knocking but he had felt an odd sense of comfort in the fact that Joyce trusted him to do so.
Of course he had been sneaking into their house a couple nights a week for the past three months now, so Joyce had given him a key some time ago for convenience.
When he walked into the living room his heart warmed as he watched Jane jumping on the couch while Will waved his body around frantically to the beat of the music by the boombox in the corner of the room. The music had been so loud they hadn’t registered his appearance so he stood there for a while, enjoying the happiness in the scene playing out in front of him. Jane suddenly snapped her head round and caught sight of him. With a goofy grin on her face, she leapt off the sofa and vaulted over to him, wrapping her arms around his middle with such force it just about knocked the wind out of him.
“Sorry, kid, didn’t mean to break up the party,” he bent down and nuzzled his nose in her hair before giving her a quick kiss on the head. They weren’t leaving for some time yet, Joyce had invited him to join them for dinner after his shift. Nevertheless, his presence usually meant the craziness Joyce didn’t mind putting up with was dialled down a couple notches.
Will smiled at Hopper and gave him a small wave hello before bending down and turning the music off.
“Hop is that you?” a voice called through from the kitchen. He thought it amusing that the music being turned off indicated his presence. He turned to go walk to the kitchen before Jane jumped up and lightly tapped his shoulders. He rolled his eyes in mock defeat at her signal requesting a piggy back ride. Truthfully he didn’t mind at all carrying the girl around on his back. He secretly liked when she got hyper like this, when she really let her hair down and was just overall happy. To him it meant she was finally getting to be a kid. And that’s all he really wanted for her.
She climbed onto the leg of the couch before carefully leaping onto his back as he walked them through to the kitchen, Will hot on their tail. When he walked into the kitchen he could already feel his face light up at the sight of her. Joyce was stood at the counter with her back to him, cutting up carrots before turning round and greeting him with a smile that could make the corners of even the sternest of men’s mouth twitch upwards. She crossed her arms as him with the young girl’s arms draped over his shoulder and shook her head with a laugh at the ridiculousness of it all.
“Hey, Chief, big day?” she asked jokingly. She knew as hell as he did that nothing ever happened in Hawkins. Well at least not now after the lab ceased to exist.
“Riveting as always,” he groaned sarcastically. “What have you guys been doing today?” he directed the question to the kids, knowing full well he would have his alone time with Joyce later that evening to properly catch up.
“I showed Jane how to play my Empire game,” Will perked up first, inadvertently cutting off Jane as she began to speak and immediately looking guilty for doing so. Despite Hopper not being able to see her, he could tell she’d given him a reassuring look as Will’s face then brightened again. “She was actually pretty good,” Will said quietly, almost nervously. It wasn’t normal for him to actually get his word in in a room full of people.
“We went to go visit Joyce at work,” Jane chimed in. In the past couple of weeks, Hopper had allowed Jane to accompany her friends on outings. With it being summer, there were plenty of kids running around so it’s not like she stood out amongst them, especially when she was hanging around with her little crew of pals.
“Oh really, is that so?” Hopper peered over his shoulder to smile at Jane and confusion came across him when he saw the secretive smirk on her face as she looked between Joyce and Will. He looked to Will who had the same expression as Jane but was staring at his shoes. Before he could ask what it was that she was holding in, she burst in a voice so loud and excited it made him flinch.
“Joyce has a date!” Jane proclaimed and Hopper’s jaw immediately dropped but Joyce was too busy gasping at Jane to notice his startled expression.
“I do not!” Joyce insisted, wide eyes at Jane. She then dipped her head and stared nervously at the floor, dropping her arms and fiddling with her fingers. “The man just asked if I wanted to-“
“A handsome man!” Jane interceded, matter-of-factly. When Joyce didn’t say anything, he watched in horror as a blush rose to her cheeks. A fear Jim never knew he had was now surfacing.
He let out a more-obvious-than-intended fake laugh as he unwrapped Jane’s arms from around his neck and bending down to let her jump down off of his back. “Hey why don’t you guys go play that Star Wars game and I’ll give your mom a hand in the kitchen?” He propositioned to the kids. Jane immediately fled the room excitedly, happy to go play her newly discovered favourite game, but Will lingered. He looked between the two before focusing on Hopper, examining the false calm on his face. Will gave Hopper a questioning look, but when Hopper’s face didn’t budge he slowly followed Jane out of the room.
Hopper had let out a breath he didn’t realised he’d been holding. The kid was too damn observant.
Joyce waited until the kids were back in the living room before she approached Hopper and wrapped her arms around his middle and reached up to give him a kiss on the cheek. “Hey,” she murmured in an intimate tone she only used when the two of them were alone.
“Hey,” Hopper involuntarily grumbled. His tone sent alarm bells ringing in Joyce’s head and it was then she noticed how stiff he was in her arms and how his eyes wouldn’t meet her own. He was angry.
“What’s up with you?” she asked, concern plaguing her features as she looked up at him. Her arms stayed tightly wrapped around him, but when he didn’t answer and continued to look straight ahead, she let go and backed away so that she now stood in his eye line. She tried to think what he could possibly be mad about. Normally when he was angry, he would still pull her close when she held him, or he would at least acknowledge the cheek kisses she gave him with a small hint of a smile that lasted for a half a second before he went back to brooding.
No, this time was different. This time he was mad at her. She thought back to what had happened, trying to pinpoint the moment that made him angry, and then she realised.
“Oh,” she whispered as she put two and two together. “Wait you’re not mad cause some guy asked me out?” she asked, hopeful it wasn’t that, not wanting to open up a door full of complications. His eyes raised to hers then, the accusation striking him.
“No, why would I be mad?” he crossed his arms as he took the cowards way out with a nonchalant shrug.
Joyce held in a sigh and found herself nervously looking at the floor again. “Well, I mean, I know we haven’t exactly discussed what-“
“Look, Joyce, if you want to go out with some guy, go for it,” Hopper said through gritted teeth, trying desperately to stay calm and brush it off. After all, was he really in any position to tell her not to go out with someone else? If that’s what she wanted, did he have any right to say he fucking hated the idea of another man touching her the same way she does?
She didn’t hold in the sigh that time as she brought a hand to her forehead before raking her hand through her hair, clearly uncomfortable with what she was going to say. “Hopper, I-“
He could feel it coming. The rejection. This was over, her date with this mystery man was enough to make her realise that she didn’t want to be running around with Hopper in secret. What she now wanted was a man to treat her the way she deserved to be treated, a companion with whom she could go on dates, and introduce to the kids as her boyfriend and maybe even fall asleep in the same bed without one of them having to sneak out before dawn. He could understand that.
But despite his understanding, Hopper didn’t think he could handle the sting of a rejection from Joyce Byers. So he stepped in before she could do so.
“Joyce, it’s fine,” he held up a comforting hand to her. And while he did just cut her off from whatever she was about to say, her lips did curl slightly into a small smile of relief. “You and me, we’re nothing, you don’t need to worry about it.”
He had meant to sound comforting. Like he truly believed he and Joyce having no emotional obligation to each other was a good thing. But the way Joyce’s face completely fell from hopeful to utter dismay, indicated that he may have said the wrong thing.
She blinked at him. “Nothing?” her voice was small yet there was a dormant anger behind her tone, threatening to wake.
He sighed and ran a hand over his face as he tried to find the right words. “Well, not ‘nothing’, I mean you and me, we’re just screwing around, right?” he offered up but when Joyce laughed for a second, he knew fine well that what he just said was far from funny.
The definitely-not-happy smile spread across her face as she tilted her head to the side and blinked three times in disbelief. She looked up at him then and clasped her hands together, pointing her fingers towards him. He could see in her face that she was on the verge of fury, but when he looked in her eyes she saw the tears threatening to fall. “I was going to tell you I said no,” she said in a way that made him think she was barely holding back an outburst.
Hopper was quiet as he dipped his head, feeling sheepish. He hadn’t expected her to say no, he was ready for her to end it all now.
“But hey, maybe I should’ve said yes but I didn’t realise we were just ‘screwing around’,” she hissed at him before storming back over to the counter to continue chopping carrots. The sound of the knife hitting the chopping board rung through the kitchen as she took out her frustrations on the orange vegetables in front of her. When he picked up on her mumbling frantically to herself, he became confused. She was obviously upset that he’d called whatever it was between them ‘screwing around’. But his question was why?
“Joyce,” he moved toward her cautiously, when she didn’t answer, he took another step. “Joyce,” he said in a firmer tone this time.
She spun round then and threw daggers at him, her eyes ablaze. “What, Jim?!” she hissed at him.
He was taken aback, her calling him ‘Jim’ had always been her way of indirectly telling him she was pissed off at him, it had been that way since they were kids. Her calling him that now was like a slap in the face.
“Jesus, Joyce what the hell is your problem?” he tried to keep his voice quiet, he really did, but his confusion was evolving into a frustrated anger he was struggling to contain. She didn’t answer but eyes were still piercing through him and her face was reddening. “What? Because I said we were ‘screwing around’?! Last time I checked Joyce that’s exactly what we were doing! That you ‘just wanted to fuck’ those were your words, not mine!”
Her eyes softened but her animosity did not waiver. “That was three months ago! And yet here we are, about to have dinner with our kids! So I’m sorry if maybe I thought there was something more here, but I guess I was wrong wasn’t I?” her accusing eyes didn’t move from his face.
Hopper shook his head. “No, no, no, you do not get to do that! This whole thing, this secret, this whole sneaking around was your call! You wanted no strings attached, and I gave you that. You didn’t want anything except a good lay!”
She stood back, putting further space between them. “So what you’re saying I just used you? Cause I don’t remember you complaining,” she brought her hands to her head again, tears were now streaming down her cheeks, her fingers running through her hair. “You had every opportunity to ask me out yourself, you had every chance to make this something more if that’s what you wanted,” she sighed.
Hopper let out a laugh of disbelief. “Oh yeah and when was that? When Lonnie left? When Will went missing? Or when Bob fucking died?” he had screamed.
When he saw the startled expression on her face he immediately regretted what he had said. She wasn’t crying anymore, she was just looking at him in absolute astonishment. He could see the heartbreak on her face and he immediately wanted to escape.
“I have to get out of here,” he practically whispered before making a dash for the living room. He didn’t hear any footsteps following behind him. He saw Jane and Will sitting on the floor, staring at each other uncomfortably and it became clear that they had heard the argument. They may not have heard the actual words, but the raised voices and yelling had been enough of an indicator.
“Come on, Jane, let’s go,” Hopper said hastily as he grabbed her jacket that had been draped over the leg of the couch.
Jane looked up at him with a defiant expression. “No.”
He sighed desperately. “Jane, come on, please,” he pleaded when he heard Joyce come through from the kitchen.
It only took one look at Joyce’s tear stricken face for Jane to glare at Hopper, nostrils flaring. “No.” she said sternly this time.
He looked between his adoptive daughter and the woman who’s heart he’d just crushed and felt an overwhelming sense of guilt and shame. With one final look at Joyce, who now looked at him with sad eyes and an expression he couldn’t read. He couldn’t tell if she wanted him to stay or leave and going by the look on her face, neither did she.
He was already out the door and walking to his car before he’d realised he’d made the decision to leave.
--
The next two hours had been spent with Hopper brooding around his cabin. He had come dangerously close to opening the bottle of bourbon he kept in a cabinet in his room, but he figured that would only make things worse. He had been an idiot. It had been the first time Joyce had indicated she wanted something more with him, the one thing Hopper wanted more than anything, and he had fucked it up. He cursed himself for being the black hole that he was.
Eventually he worked up the nerve to return to the Byers household to pick up Jane. If Joyce even wanted to speak to him, well, he would cross that bridge when he came to it. But considering the phone hadn’t rang the whole time he was back in the cabin, he figured she didn’t have anything to say, at least not yet.
But something was off when he pulled up to the Byers house. Both Joyce and Jonathan’s cars were gone, but the living room light was still on. His eyebrows knotted together in a sense of bewilderment as he tried to figure out where Joyce had disappeared to. When he came up to the door, he didn’t bother knocking.
But then he saw the state of the house. Furniture flipped, a new dent in the dry wall, pictures that decorated the hallway were now either tilted or strewn across the floor, it was clear signs of a struggle. He was about to double back to his car to fetch his gun but a figured appeared in front of him.
He looked up from the carnage to find Jonathan stood there, his eyes swollen with tears and the side of his head bleeding. Hopper darted over to him and took his head in his hands and examined him. Jonathan began crying again and put his hands on Jim’s arms.
“Jonathan what the hell happened? Are you hurt?” he questioned when he couldn’t find a source of bleeding on the side of his head. Jonathan was stuttering, trying to make a sentence but nothing was coming out except strangled noises of panic. “Jonathan where’s Jane? Will? Your mom? Are they alright?”
“Gone,” was the first word the sniffling teenager managed to get out that sent panic coursing through Hopper. “He took them…” Jonathan trailed off when he burst into hysterical crying, clearly replaying a memory.
“Jonathan, who took them?” Hopper pressed for an answer, moving his hands to his shoulders, shaking him slightly. “Who was here? Who took them?!”
Jonathan took a deep breath and looked Hopper directly in the eye.
“Brenner.”