@kamchatkatraitor (as discussed)
The silence in the motel room is stirred only by Jim’s deep breathing in the bed beside her. Joyce wonders how he can sleep so soundly when the world is so rapidly closing in around them, but she does not blame him. She’s sure she only knows a fraction of what he’s been through in the past eight months, so it is no surprise that even the simple pleasures of a real, albeit uncomfortable, bed is enough to lure him to sleep.
She sits up after a while, clutching the sheets around herself (at least they’d finally had their evening free of interruption before he’d passed out). She watches him for several moments, a ghost of a smile haunting her lips. She won’t say it aloud, not yet, but she knows already that she loves him. And it is with that thought that she rises from the bed, carefully slipping out from the arm that he has slung across her hips, and begins to dress.
The cold air outside is a shock in comparison to the warmth inside the motel room and she instantly tugs her coat tighter around her small frame as she steps out onto the porch. That’s when she sees Dmitri sitting on the steps, seemingly lost in thought. Carefully, she lowers herself down beside him, giving a few more moments of silence before she speaks softly.
Alaska was, as it turned out, not much different than his home country - brutally cold, a sharpness in the air that burned his lungs, but… safer. The final word was repeated again and again, as the ex-Soviet tossed and turned beneath the clean sheets of the motel bed, desperately trying to will himself to sleep. The last few days had been nothing short of nightmarish - being caught had only been the beginning. Monsters, and another world, had only added to the rapid-fire hum of his mind, which rippled through the stories he’d been told like a record on repeat. When the cold sweat began, after a short moment of rest and an image he hoped to one day forget, Dmitri gave up, and rose from the bed.
Joyce and Hopper had both assured him that once they were out of Russia, they’d be safe, but there remained a paranoid nagging in the back of his mind that had him taking his pistol on his way out the door alongside the key. Carefully and quietly, he maneuvered onto the nearby stairwell, settling onto it while lighting a cigarette, relishing in the quiet. There were no prisoners there, no commands, or screams of pain. Only the soft hum of the ice machine nearby, and…
… the unmistakable sound of footsteps. Turning, blue eyes caught sight of Joyce, bundled up in a puffy jacket. A small, but sorrowful smile greeted her. “No, too much on my mind. You?” he asked, noting that she had come out alone, not with Hopper.
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