Chapter Text
A quick kiss on her sweet Will’s forehead and a squeeze of Johnathan’s shoulders was all time afforded her these days as she rushed out of the door. She was trailing a toy on a string that had attached itself to her shoe and her shirt was half untucked as she darted to her car, checking her watch like that would somehow help when she was already running late. It was almost guaranteed that the car wouldn’t start. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had enough cash to put gas in the tank and something kept misfiring in the engine that Mr Melvald told her she should get replaced. That was easier said than done when you were a single mother working two jobs just to keep afloat. She kicked off the toy and glanced at herself in the mirror. She was sure she had aged a decade in the couple of years she’d gone it alone, but she wouldn’t change it. Her boys were happier, more confident, more comfortable in themselves. And she felt the difference too. She may be dead on her feet most of the time but in the rare moments she got to relax she found herself smiling and laughing more than she had in years. Lonnie Byers had never been right for her. She should have dropped him decades ago. Joyce made a feeble attempt at smoothing out her hair before she turned the key in the ignition and the car shuddered and choked. Exasperated, she dropped her head onto the steering wheel. She didn’t have time for this. Her second job had a three-strike rule, and she was sitting on strike five.
“Come on you piece of shit” she muttered, pumping the gas pedal, and flooding the ignition. The car sprung to life, shaking a little and sounding anything but healthy. Joyce laughed in surprise, pulled it into reverse and tore out of her gravel driveway.
She had been working at the police station for three months. In that time, she’d been hit on twice, vomited on once, and called ‘Mommy’ more times than she could count. It had been an experience, to say the least, but it helped her pay the bills and, since she worked in the evenings, she rarely had to interact with anybody. Hawkins was a quiet town. The most exciting thing that had happened since she started working there was a drunken bust up between two old friends who accidentally slept with the same woman. Pulling up outside the police station she was surprised to see the parking lot so busy. Generally, she would find one beat up old station wagon belonging to the night custodian Jeffrey and a couple of empty police cars. Tonight, it was standing room only, meaning she had to park out on the street. There was a buzz about the place. She heard chatter as she climbed the stairs, but it all hushed when the bell above the door announced her arrival.
“Joyce!” cried Florence, the second she stepped inside “Have you heard?”
Joyce frowned and studied the faces of at least half of the Hawkins police force. They all looked ashen and concerned, like they’d seen a ghost. She shook her head as she slipped her jacket from her shoulders. She never had time to hear anything. The regular customers at Melvald’s kept her up to date on the inane small-town gossip but other than that she was completely out of the loop.
“They found a body” deputy Milton told her, his expression grave “Young woman, down by the river”
Joyce gasped, peering into the chief’s office but averting her eyes when he looked back at her “Who is she?”
“Out of towner” Milton shrugged “Her body was all carved up and posed like some kind of ritual”
“Oh god” Joyce muttered, covering her mouth with her hand. She did not have a weak stomach, but she had a certain empathy that helped her to sympathise with people. Police Chief Burrows was retiring this month. In fact, his retirement party was scheduled for the next week. She knew that because she had the night off because of it. Not so that she could attend but so that she could clean up after it the next day. She had been grateful at the time. Any extra cash sent her way was a blessing. Now, she wondered if sweet old Bill would actually get to hang up his hat at all. With a murder on the books, and a murderer on the loose, it didn’t look likely. She was hanging her coat up in the locker room when he made the announcement. He was stepping aside, with immediate effect, and his replacement would arrive any minute now.
Jim Hopper had wanted to make a good impression on his first day as chief, but he had squeezed his celebratory donut a little too enthusiastically and covered himself in strawberry jelly. On his way home to change, he’d gotten a flat and then the heavens had chosen that exact moment to open in all their dramatic splendour. He wasn’t entirely surprised. If he didn’t have bad luck, then he wouldn’t have any luck at all and he wasn’t sure why he thought coming back to Hawkins would somehow change that. He didn’t have a particular affinity with the town. He had grown up on these streets, had his first kiss behind those bike sheds and drank his first beer outside that general store, but the town itself had no pull for him. He’d never missed the people in it. Small town people lived in a bubble. They were so consumed by self importance that they failed to even see the world beyond their own district area. There was, of course, an exception to that rule. He did miss one person. One special someone he had always regretted leaving behind.
Joyce had been his best friend, his partner in crime and, in hindsight, his first love. Like most teenage boys, he’d been an idiot, and he hadn’t realised that he loved her until it was too late. If she knew how many times he wrote and rewrote letters to her in the jungle of Vietnam, maybe she wouldn’t have looked at him like he had risen from the dead when he stepped inside the police station and found her standing there wide eyed and astounded.
“Jim?” she gasped. She hadn’t called him Jim since middle school and as foreign as it sounded coming from her lips, he probably deserved it. He had lost the privilege of familiarity by pulling away, and staying away, from her. It had been the right thing to do at the time. She was married when he got home from the war, pregnant with her first son, happy. Letting her go had been the best thing he could have done but he had mourned her like a lover even though that is never what she was. Time had been kind to her. She looked as beautiful now as she had back then, perhaps even more so. Her big brown eyes still looked at him the same way. Like they were searching deep into his soul. His first instinct was to go to her, to wrap her in his arms and tell her he was surprised, but happy, to see her. Her first instinct was to step backwards and in an instant, he knew where they stood.
“Everyone, meet our new chief” announced a man who would later introduce himself as Bill Burrows. He went to Jim with his arms spread wide and a smile on his face, breezing past a small and invisible Joyce as he rushed to be the first to shake his hand “Welcome Chief Hopper”
Chief Burrows took him on a whistle-stop tour of the office and Joyce disappeared into a backroom to throw on a cleaners smock and grab a broom. As he was introduced to a multitude of people, he kept his eyes peeled for her always. He wanted to go to her, to tell her that he was happy to see her, that he was here to start over, or start again, he wasn’t sure which. Some of the staff in the police station were familiar to him from his school days, others were new. He shook every hand with the same smile and nod, halfway listening to their warm welcome and well wishes while he kept one eye open for the one person he really did want to speak to.
He would be lying if he said he hadn’t anticipated bumping into her. He had rehearsed what he would say to her the whole drive down from the city but in his fantasy scenario he had bumped into her in the store or taken himself to her front door with a sheepish look and a plea to rekindle their precious friendship. The truth was, he had missed her from the very first second, he left Hawkins and he continued to miss her every second after that. He even missed her now, while she was technically in the same room as him. He and Joyce had something special, he didn’t know what to call it exactly, but he knew that his soul was never happier than when he was around her. It had sat there, off centre and agitated, inside of him for all these years, itching to get back to her side. Hopper believed in soulmates. He also believed that soulmates came in different genres; the friend, the teacher, the lover, and the true soul partner. Joyce was at least one of his.
The office cleared out fairly quickly and Chief Burrows put him straight to work. He was buried under a thousand files by the time the clock ticked its way around to eleven. He had purposefully chosen to start work in the evening. He was a night owl, happiest when the moon was in the sky and the stars twinkled. In his opinion, nobody should be expected to work before noon. Starting late also gave him the opportunity, and solitude, he needed to figure out how Hawkins PD worked. In his experience, most police departments were a law unto themselves. They all had different work ethics, different methods of inspection and discipline, a different climate to anywhere else. Before he changed Hawkins PD completely, he had to know it. He started with the reports. Six months worth of crime records and the state-wide stats buried him from view.
Despite all the reports he forced himself to sift through, his mind kept on wandering back to the look in Joyce’s eyes when she saw him there. He had hurt her, unintentionally but irrevocably, and she still bore the scars. When he left, all those years ago, he never said goodbye. In all honesty, she had not crossed his mind until he was already halfway across the country on the back of a personnel truck headed for basic training. Teenage boys had a certain kind of tunnel vision at times. If they weren’t thinking about sex, they were thinking about war, and eighteen-year-old Joyce hadn’t offered him either of those. Looking back, he recognised what an asshole he had been, but hindsight was 20/20 and he couldn’t take back any of the poor decisions he had made in the past. He spied her sweeping the floor close to the coffee machine and took his opportunity to try and break the ice.
A good police station was fuelled by its coffee machine. A lot hinged on how good, or bad, the coffee was. With that in mind, Hopper casually strolled to the machine with a grubby, borrowed mug swinging from his index finger. Joyce glanced at him briefly, not acknowledging his presence with anything other than a twitch of her lip. Hopper was suddenly consumed with an awkward energy. He’d never struggled to find words before. He was a confident guy, a charmer, a lovable rogue. He was an insatiable flirt. His ex-wife had told him that it was one of his most frustrating qualities. Suddenly, he couldn’t flirt to save his life. He wanted to smile at her, to drop her a line and watch as a blush coloured her cheeks in response. He wanted to hear her laugh again, that laugh that had haunted him in the most beautiful way when he slept under a blanket of canvas in the jungle. He just couldn’t figure out how to do that. Instead, he placed his mug under the spout of the coffee machine and hopelessly poked at buttons. None of them worked. He pressed the espresso button three times and instead of three shots of rich, dark coffee, he got nothing but a choked splutter in return. He tried the cappuccino button next, then the mocha, and the latte. The words didn’t really mean anything to him, but the end result did. He wanted coffee in his mug, not a sludge of tar. He tilted the mug towards himself and the trail of black on the bottom of the mug didn’t even move.
“It doesn’t work” Joyce told him, stating the obvious. That didn’t stop his heart from turning a somersault at the sound of her voice. He took a moment to push his nerves aside before he looked at her. When he did, she was standing a few feet away with her head bowed slightly.
“Can see that” he shrugged, showing her the questionable contents of his mug.
Joyce wrinkled her nose “Looks like something my dog left in the yard”
Elated to hear her joking with him and opening up about her life now, Hopper smiled softly “You have a dog?”
Joyce immediately dropped her eyes and took a step backwards. He could almost see the walls she constructed around herself, pushing him back and locking him out.
“The cops...” she said, redirecting the conversation “They get their coffee from a little place on the corner of fifth”
Hopper nodded, allowing her the space to be aloof. He knew when to push and when leave well alone and all of the signals she was giving him told him she didn’t want to be pushed.
“Maybe I’ll check it out” he said, moving further out of her space. His disappointment was obvious and Joyce, being Joyce, picked up on it. She watched him slowly walk away. It was all for theatrics. He knew she would feel compelled to reach out to him if he pretended to be sad. He knew she couldn’t help herself. Deep down she was still that same old Joyce he had once known.
“It closes at ten” she told him, rocking on her heels as he turned around. She took the mug from his hand and placed it under the machine. She pressed a series of buttons then slapped the side and, as if by magic, actual coffee began to pour into the mug. Joyce smiled up at him “You gotta know how to treat her”
With that, she ducked out of his space and went back to her duties cleaning the station. Hopper retrieved the mug and stared into the dark, warm liquid. His lips curled into an affectionate smile as he inadvertently began to reminisce about their younger years. There had been a time when they came as a package deal. Joyce and Jim, always together, always up to mischief. They were an unlikely pair, the jock, and the outcast, but something about them just made sense. He took a sip of his coffee, glancing at her across the room and finding her eyes already on him. She averted them quickly, but he saw it, and she knew he did.
“Maybe tomorrow you can show me that coffee place”
Joyce watched him wince as he forced down the disgusting station coffee and for the briefest of moments, she found herself smiling. There was something about Jim Hopper that pulled her in. He had a kind of orbit, a magnetism around him that she had never been able to resist. It amazed her that it still existed, even after all this time. But Hopper was a different person now, and so was she, which is why her first instinct was to refuse his request.
“It’s right across the road” she pointed out, pouting her lips and raising her eyebrows. It was easy to get lost in the familiarity. Hopper had been a huge part of her life, but he had left her, suddenly and without warning, and the truth was, he didn’t really know her anymore. Time changed people, it was inevitable and unavoidable. The person she had been when she was eighteen years old didn’t exist anymore. She was simply a vague memory of a stranger, a soul lost to time, an image locked in Jim Hopper’s mind. Hopper smiled at her, softly and affectionately. He had an odd sort of optimism around him for a man who wasn’t known for his positivity. He’d never let something like a rejection temper his spirit.
“Well, how about we go somewhere else then? Where’s good to eat around here?” he stepped a little closer, entering into her atmosphere, enveloping her in an aura of warmth. It made her heart rate pick up and heat flooded her cheeks as she found herself being washed away on a wave of, probably misguided, elation.
“Like, on a date?” she smiled. It had been a long time since Joyce had flirted with anyone. She wasn’t entirely sure that she knew how anymore, and she was almost certain that it wouldn’t lead anywhere, but it gave her a tiny rush of adrenaline anyway. Until she took a moment to absorb what was happening at least. Hopper had been a good friend to her, but she had witnessed the trail of broken hearts he had left in his wake. Looking into his sparkling blue eyes she could almost convince herself he was worth the risk but then she remembered that she had more than her own heart to think about here. Her boys were her priority over everything else. If she had to make a choice between her happiness and theirs, she would choose theirs every single time.
“Seems like we have some catching up to do” Hopper smirked “May as well do it over some good food, maybe some wine”
Hopper was charming. His smile came easy, and his eyes didn’t shy from hers. He reached out with a gentle hand and touched her arm. It was a fleeting touch, barely perceptible to the untrained eye, but it sent a bolt of lightning through her body. Joyce moved back, clutching the broom to her chest.
“Wine?!” Joyce echoed, a panic rising in her chest.
“Yeah, little wine, maybe some dancing...”
“Dancing?!” Joyce choked.
“I mean, I’m not eighteen anymore but I can still bust a move when the moment calls for it” he shook his hips a little, swinging his arms around like he was doing the twist and chuckling under his breath.
“I... I don’t dance” Joyce stammered, immediately breaking away and heading for the cleaning closet. Her shift was almost over, and her last duty was to wipe down the front desk. Hopper didn’t hesitate to follow her. He had a pile of papers on his desk as tall as her and yet he had chosen to follow her around. As she rooted around in her supplies, Hopper leaned against the doorway.
“That’s not how I remember it” he teased.
Joyce blanched. She had danced a lot when she was young. In his room with the record player spinning, by the lake with a cigarette in her hand, at their prom in a hand-me-down dress that didn’t quite fit her. She couldn’t remember the last time she had danced. It was almost like the moment he left; her feet had forgotten how to move.
“That was a long time ago” she said as she actively suppressed the sound of his name burning on her tongue. It came all too easily to her, falling back into old habits and thinking of him as her sweet friend Hop again. She brushed past him, moving swiftly towards the front door and hastily swiping a cloth across the desk.
Hopper left her alone for the rest of her shift, stealing glances at her over his paperwork after he intentionally left the office door open. When she finally hung up her cleaning supplies and let her hair out, she made her way to his office. She felt like she owed him some sort of explanation. He pretended to be really interested in the paper in his hand when she hovered in the doorway, but she knew he wasn’t really reading it. She knew every tell that man had. He could never maintain a poker face around her. She stopped short of crossing the threshold of his office. It had always been out of bounds to her. Bill Burrows did not take kindly to people moving his stuff. Hopper was probably different, but who was she to say? She hadn’t seen the man for twenty years. Give or take.
“I’ll clean the cells tomorrow” she told him after rapping her knuckles lightly on the doorframe. Hopper looked up, feigning surprise. His face lit up with a smile that was so sincere and endearing that she could hardly bare it.
“See you tomorrow” he said simply, holding her eye contact until she dropped hers. Joyce nodded and made a move to walk away but then something pulled her back.
“It’s been a long time” she said, needlessly. He knew how long it had been. He had his reasons. Hopper placed the sheet of paper on top of the file in front of him and nodded again, moistening his lips, and taking a deep breath. He acted like he was bracing for something. Her rage, perhaps. Her tears. She never got the opportunity to vent those things to him, but it felt pointless now. It was all water under the bridge. He was a different person now, and so was she. So instead of scolding him or pushing him further away, she extended an olive branch of friendship in the form of a smile “I’m glad you’re back”
Hopper looked genuinely touched but she didn’t wait around for him to ruin the moment with any more words. She left the police station, drove swiftly home, and screamed into her pillow. She was glad he was back and that made a knot of dread twist inside her stomach. They were different people now, but this Joyce Byers was infinitely more vulnerable and broken than the one he had left behind. And that Jim Hopper was regret waiting to happen. He made her feel like she was at the bottom of a roller coaster, strapped in tight, unable to escape. She was looking up at the incline, anticipating the drop with fear and dread. Enough to smash the emergency stop button and bail out. Hopper had always had the potential to be her biggest what if and her most devastating goodbye. She couldn’t let him get under her skin again.
The next evening, when she showed up for her shift, the station was quiet and dark. The cells were empty. Jeffrey who often manned the place on nightshift was snoozing in his chair and the whole place felt different. Despite her decision to remain detached, her eyes drifted towards his office the instant she stepped inside. He had set up an incident board for the strange murder and arranged his files into five neat piles, but he was nowhere to be seen. She tried to ignore the way her heart fell to her feet when she realised, she wouldn’t see him. He had been back in her life for one day and he’d turned her into a needy, jittery teenager with a crush. She changed into her uniform and tied her hair into a messy ponytail with a pink scrunchie before she walked the mop and bucket out towards the cells. He startled her when he appeared a moment later, a donut in his mouth and a tray of coffees in his hand. He’d taken himself to the coffee shop before it closed and invested in some real coffee. It even smelled delicious.
“Hey” he said, a hint of nerves in his voice “Got you a vanilla latte”
He handed it to her so casually, like it was a normal, daily, occurrence but she smiled at him like he’d just handed her a precious jewel. There was a hierarchy in the station, and she was at the bottom. When the officers brought in cakes and treats, they were for the officers. When they had a lottery, or arranged a party, it was between them. When they celebrated a wedding, or a birth, or a retirement, it was a celebration between the officers and the admin staff, never the part time cleaner.
Hopper pulled a chair out in front of one of the detectives’ desks and nudged his head towards it “Take a load off” he suggested.
He walked around to the other side and threw himself into a different chair, dropping his hat onto the desk and leaning back. Joyce looked at Jeffrey, who was still sound asleep in his chair, before she perched daintily on the seat across from Hopper. She took a long sip of her coffee. The sweetness hit her tongue and widened her eyes. She had never tasted anything like it before.
“This must be one of those fancy city coffees” she teased.
“Yeah, forgot that anything new was witchcraft out here” Hopper chuckled, scratching at the stubble on his chin. The atmosphere felt less flirtatious and that made her feel much more comfortable.
“Watch your back or they’ll have you in the stocks” Joyce smiled “Right beside the outcast single mom”
She dipped her head and tipped her drink like she was making a toast but there was a certain amount of honesty in her joke. Nobody knew how to talk to her anymore. They were afraid to ask how she was doing because it was very obviously not good. They never invited her out because inevitably she’d refuse. They just avoided her as much as possible like maybe her divorcee status would infect them all. It was different for men but then Hopper had a different reason for being divorced and shunned. He had lost his child. His precious girl. His Sara.
Joyce had heard about it from a mutual friend, one who was still in regular contact with Hopper and who had maintained an acquaintanceship with her. She had written him a letter expressing her condolences and then tore it up before it could hit the mailbox. It had haunted her ever since. She wanted to comfort him, to tell him that she was still there for him, that she was still his friend when he felt most alone. Lost friendships left a gaping hole in a person. Hopper had been gone from her life for a long time, but she still cared for him. She still felt a strong, painful empathy for him.
“I’ve never been embarrassed to stand beside you” he shrugged, taking a big bite of his donut “Never will be either”
It was a simple statement, one that could have passed as fleeting and inconsequential, but he put so much heart and truth behind it that it took on a power she hadn’t expected. A thousand butterflies took flight in her stomach, their wings beating a fast, hard rhythm that was matched by her heart. Jim Hopper had always been something special to her. More than a friend, less than a lover, unfathomably attractive, naturally charming. It had been a long time since she’d looked at a man and craved him. She craved Hopper. She craved his sparkling eyes, his gentle touch, and his soft lips. She was curious about him. More curious than she was comfortable with. He terrified her, not because he himself was scary, but because his magnetism was strong, and her heart was weak. Joyce Byers was in trouble. And she knew it.