Dec 24, 2020
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A Fresh Start
When Hopper woke early that morning, he found Joyce already awake, sitting on the floor next to the wood stove. A sugar plum vision wrapped up in his warm flannel logger from the night before, softly lit by shades of twilight through dusty cabin windows. She was puffing away on a cigarette, a steaming cup of coffee resting at her bare feet. Focused on keeping the fire stoked, she didn’t notice him staring from his bedroom door.
Will and Joyce had come over to the cabin for dinner and a movie the night before, but a snow storm had rolled in around ten, changing movie night into an impromptu sleepover. Around midnight, Will and El dragged the tv into her bedroom under the reassurance from Joyce that they would be fine with the door closed. Will ended up sleeping in El’s room, leaving the double bed in Hopper’s room open for Joyce. Hopper would take the lazyboy, ever the begrudging gentleman.
Three AM rolled around, and when Joyce could hear Hopper struggling to get comfy in his chair, she offered to share the bed. One thing led to another and by the time the sun came up, neither had gotten much sleep at all.
It was quarter after seven now and the blizzard was still raging outside. It looked like they'd be staying put for a few more hours.
"Morning" he said, sitting down by the fire next to her, rubbing his eyes, and trying but failing to fix his bed head. Joyce couldn't help but smile at the sight.
"The kids are still passed out. I made coffee if you want," she said, passing him her cigarette to finish off.
“Sorry I uh, woke you last night," he said sheepishly, taking the smoke from her and bringing it to his lips.
Joyce looked at him with big eyes and a little smirk.
"Don't apologize. I forgot… how good we were... at that."
She pursed her lips and cleared her throat, being polite in case little ears were listening. Hopper chuckled -- they always did make a good match between the sheets.
Joyce gave a little sigh and shook her head, as if dizzy from her thoughts. She looked back at him, blushing, and then reached for his hands.
"What happened last night…"
Hopper stubbed out the last of the cigarette and threw it in the fireplace before leaning in to finish her thought.
"What happened last night will certainly happen again,” he said in a deep, husky murmur. “Tonight, even. And tomorrow too, if I'm lucky."
Joyce smiled and nodded, pecking him on the lips to keep him quiet, stifling her own giggle.
“If you’re lucky...”
Watching her light up like that gave Hopper hope that they were finally coming to a turning point. Life was slowly going back to normal -- whatever the hell that was. Maybe this could be their year?
No more fighting. No more lies, governmental or otherwise. No disagreements or bad blood between them.
A fresh start. As clean as the driven snow.
Joyce stretched her feet out in front of her on the warm tile and they found a spot on his lap. Toes wiggled as big hands wrapped around her arches and massaged a moan out of her. She leaned back on her hands, and then tilted her head back too, exposing the slim line of her neck. His heartbeat quickened as her silhouette lengthened under his touch, backlit by the soft glow of fluffy white flakes settling on the windowsill. The quiet, early morning beckoned them back to bed.
Hopper continued, pushing his luck.
"Maybe it could even happen again, right now? If we're really… really quiet?"
Joyce looked back at him and then the bedroom where the kids were, and then back at him. It was clear she didn’t really need much convincing.
As the snow piled up outside around the sleepy little cabin in the woods, the coffee got cold and the fire died down, but a long lost love rekindled.
Joyce & Hopper at Prom commissioned for chapter five of my fanfic, Stand By Me.
..."Ready?" Joyce asked with pep and reached for his arm — as if she wasn't about to smuggle booze into Prom under her dress.
"Oh yeah." Hopper sucked in a breath as they headed towards the school's entrance, trying not to trip over his feet as he escorted her into the party. He couldn't take his eyes off her. "You look really pretty tonight," he said, finally working up the courage to tell her what he'd thought since she walked down the stairs that evening.
But Joyce didn't seem to notice the sentiment behind his words.
"Yeah, yeah, you can whistle for it." She grinned, slapping his chest before Karen caught her attention...
Artwork by endlessly talented @toart ❤️
Some Things Last a Long Time
"So, this is it," Hopper said, his arms spread wide in the middle of the room, giving Joyce the grand tour.
He'd done his best to give it a quick tidy before she came over since it was her first time seeing it since he came clean about harboring the living breathing experiment and fugitive from HNL in his grandfather's old hunting cabin. His best wasn't exactly up to Joyce's "neatnik" standards though, and his version of a tidy was more or less just shoving things in various hiding places, wherever there was space to fit more clutter. As Joyce moved further into the cabin, Hopper suddenly remembered a half dozen other things he forgot to do (like sweep and dust) and he just hoped that she didn't notice.
Joyce took it all in, one eyebrow raised, not entirely sure what to make of the shabby chic bachelor decor. The look on her face indicated that she still couldn't believe that he'd been living there with El this whole time. She stood there for a long moment without saying a word and it almost looked like she didn't know what to say, but she had to say something.
"It's, um …cozy?" she offered, looking for the right word for the tiny space.
Hopper nodded as she continued her inspection. He could see the gears spinning as she moved around the living room. Her hands skipped over his Granny's quilt on the back of the chair and the old Hopper family radio that she probably recognized from another life; old, forgotten memories that came flooding back. She checked out the bathroom and its accordion privacy door before making her way to the bedrooms, taking a peek behind the curtain into his room and then poking her head into El's. Joyce blinked a few times and her lips pressed together in thought. He could practically feel the unsolicited interior decorating advice incoming.
"And you two have been living here? For a year? Like this?" she asked, still in complete disbelief.
He nodded again, moving ahead of her in the kitchen, grabbing a small stack of dirty dishes he had missed on the first pass. He slyly ditched them in the sink.
"Well, I think it's really sweet," she said, finally, much to his relief. He had passed the inspection and could relax.
"Wait, what's this?"
Hopper heard Joyce give a little gasp behind him. Uh oh, what ungodly mess did she find now? He spun around to see her facing him with a shocked look on her face like she couldn't believe what she had found.
"You have a picture of me? On your fridge?" Joyce squeaked out, snatching the image from out under the Schlitz magnet to stare at it closer. He forgot it was even there -- a vivid color photo of her, circa 1964.
Hopper always loved how she looked like a model in it, dark hair teased into a bouffant, wearing that bright blue dress. Looking beyond the camera with the most beautiful far-away expression. He still remembered the day he took it with his new Kodachrome; the camera she surprised him with the Christmas before he shipped off. The same one he used to send snapshots back to her when he was so far away. Before everything had fallen apart.
She was staring at him now, cheeks flushed, waiting for his response.
"The kid found it in a box," Hopper said. "She said you looked pretty and put it up there, I swear. I had nothing to do with it!" His hands went up, conveying his innocence, though his smile betrayed him.
"Uh-huh," Joyce nodded, smiling too. Knowing it was a fib but going along with it anyway. "You had nothing to do with it."
The Last Snowball
~or~
Why Joyce Hates Jim Hopper’s Guts (a love story)
--
December, 1964
--
"Skipping class again, huh?"
Jim Hopper thought he’d been busted, until he turned to see his tiny brunette friend cross the hall toward him with a great big smile on her face. He chewed slowly on the last bite of his second sandwich of the day as he watched Joyce flutter up to him like a little bird.
"Did you run here to state the obvious?" he asked through a smirk and a mouthful of bologna.
"What? No!" Joyce’s nose scrunched up and she quickly shook her head before the big smile crept back. "You weren't by the steps after fifth, and I was looking for you. I wanna ask you something!"
"Why are your cheeks all red then?" he asked.
Joyce brought a hand up to her left cheek and stood on her tiptoes to look at her reflection in his locker mirror. Indeed, her cheeks were ten shades of crimson, and the blush only deepened when she saw it with her own eyes.
Hopper swallowed and raised an eyebrow slowly.
"What's up?"
Joyce sighed and fidgeted with the lock on his locker door. Then she repositioned the textbooks in her arms, looking anywhere but at him. She tried not to think about how hot her cheeks were getting under his gaze.
"Well -- I don't know if you noticed, but the winter dance on Friday is a Sadie Hawkins," she said holding her breath, before sneaking a peek at him with wide, worried eyes to gauge his reaction. But there was none.
He just kinda shrugged.
"Yeah, I know. Half the junior girls asked me already," he admitted, crumpling the empty paper bag that once held the rest of second-lunch and tossed it in the trash can over her head and behind her. Completely clueless, as usual.
Joyce deflated.
"Oh yeah?" she asked, keeping the smile plastered to her face, desperately trying to ignore the heaviness in her chest at his words. "Who?"
Sneaking around
His uniform was unbuttoned, and her jeans were off, but that was as far as they had gotten into it when they heard the front door slam.
“Shit!” Joyce mumbled into Hopper’s mouth. Breaking away mid-kiss, she hit pause on their heavy petting session. He just shrugged and switched to tracing tiny circles with his tongue down the side of her neck while she stopped to listen--
The boys were home early.
“Maybe they forgot something? They’re supposed to be at the Wheelers til 8,” Joyce whispered to Hopper.
He continued to kiss her neck, nibbling at her earlobe, trying to entice her back. If they were quiet enough, they might just get away with this.
Joyce gave in, enjoying it for a moment before she heard her oldest say, “Hey, where’s Mom?”
"Her purse is here," her youngest said. "She must be in her room."
Joyce bolted up, knocking her lover over, nearly rolling him off the bed. Hopper felt like he was in high school all over again. He chuckled to himself when she started fumbling with her clothes, acting like her father was coming through the door with a shotgun any second.
“What are you doing?” he asked, bemused, casually buttoning his shirt back up, watching her struggle to pull her jeans on.
“Hiding! Maybe they’ll think I’m not home. Get over here,” she hissed, waving him over to where she was climbing into her closet, aiming for the spot behind her bathrobe.
“Oh, that’s great. We’ll both fit in there.” Hopper rolled his eyes at her. “Finish getting dressed, Joyce. It’s probably time to tell them anyway.”
“Mom? Are you in there?” Jonathan called out to her from the other side of her bedroom door.
There was a pause before Will chimed in.
“With Hopper?”
“Shit,” Joyce said again.
It was time to fess up.
Terminal Thoughts
"Aeroflot 118 to Rome is now boarding at Gate 11B."
A disembodied voice echoed throughout the terminal, the thick accent announcing the next departing flight. It repeated in both Russian and Italian before a few passengers at the gate stood up to gather their things.
The quiet couple sitting at the next gate over watched, waiting for their own flight, still another hour away. The pair could still pass for tourists -- just two people who spent a few weeks on the road in Russia with nothing more than a rucksack and the clothes on their backs. Sure, they might have been a bit older than the usual nomadic crowd, but they blended in all the same.
The small group next to them formed a line to board the plane: Businessmen were chatting idly with other businessmen as they waited for first-class to board. Families hugged, seeing their loved ones off at the gate. A group of students and their teachers did roll-call to make sure everyone was there. Just ordinary people, going about their lives. All those carefree souls, ignorant to the evils threatening humanity.
Joyce envied them for it.
None of these people had a clue what she had gone through to get to this point. Or what Hopper went through... And unless hell froze over in her lifetime, Joyce realized that she could never be like those people ever again.
She had something, though, and that was the man sitting right next to her. Someone she thought she had lost forever. Sitting next to her was a second chance, and she was undeniably grateful for it. Joyce looked over to Hopper, taking his presence in, letting herself stare. He was a sight for sore eyes. Almost the same, but not entirely. A bit older and different, somehow. Changed by his experience in Kamchatka.
While he had been relatively quiet after the rescue, he was even more so now that they were all alone. Their assigned FBI agents had dropped them off in the outskirts of Moscow the night before with new passports and an allowance, advising them to find their own way home. Suddenly, they were by themselves for the first time in a long while. Joyce thought that maybe he'd open up to her that night when they got settled in the hotel room. Instead, he simply held her in his arms on the bed, watching Russian State television in complete silence into the darkest hours of the morning.
It was clear Hopper wasn't ready to tell her what happened to him after he disappeared and she wasn't going to push the issue. Whatever it was, she only knew that it left him rough around the edges and grizzled. Was the old Jim Hopper even in there anymore?
The ZZ Top beard didn't help matters either. A squirelly mess of dirty blonde and gray, it made Hopper look so much older than his forty-two years. In a silly attempt to make him smile, Joyce called him "Rasputin" in the taxi on the way to the airport earlier that night. Their driver had laughed at her joke, but Hopper scowled, so she knew the beard would be gone as soon as he got his hands on a razor -- or three. He’d lost all the excess weight he had put on the summer before, too, and where his clothes used to fit tight, they hung off him now. He must have kept active locked away in the gulag. It looked as if he had volunteered for another tour in 'Nam.
Most of all, Hopper looked the way Joyce felt: fucking exhausted. They had been living their lives in a constant state of fear for so long. It felt like they were always running from monsters, or tangled up in a dark web of intergovernmental conspiracies... or something even bigger than all that combined. Was a boring, normal life even on their radar anymore?
Joyce wished they could just run away from it all, even though she had already tried that once and failed. This was proof of what running away from her problems got her... sitting in the boarding lounge in an airport in Russia, watching strangers go about their day, wondering if they could ever be happy again.
Fantasizing about what it would be like.
She bumped Hopper's shoulder to catch his attention. He grunted, looking down at her, as she nodded toward the dwindling group of passengers in front of them. They were almost the last ones at the gate now, and their flight wasn't for another hour. How easy would it be to just slip in with this flight to Rome? Take the train through the Italian countryside, find a little seaside villa to rent? Go on that fancy Italian dinner date? They could spend the next week forgetting everything that had happened, and picking up right where they left off. Make up for all that time apart.
"Whaddya say? Take a little detour on the way home?" She raised her eyebrows at him and repeated a line she heard Karen use once: "I've heard the Amalfi Coast is lovely this time of year.”
Hopper looked at her like she had lost her mind. He shook his head, realizing a second later that she was only joking.
"What? I've always wanted to see Italy! We're already halfway there," Joyce reasoned with him, only sort-of joking now. "And the kids'll be fine for another week."
"Tempting. But no," Hopper said. A smirk touched the corner of his mouth at her flighty suggestion before the almost-smile faded away to a grimace. "I'm done with this side of the world for a while," he grumbled, taking her hand. He laced his fingers with hers and then leaned over to kiss her forehead.
"Take me home… please?"
Joyce chuckled and sank into his embrace, content to go home too. Back to normal, whatever that was for them now. As they continued their never-ending wait for the red-eye to New York, she rested her head on his shoulder.
"Fine,” she said, “but you owe me a trip to Europe."
confessions of an accidental prom queen ♛
{a teen!jopper playlist} summer’s meant for loving and leaving /// 1965
cosmic americana /// sadcore /// 60s bubblegum pop, soul & country covers /// & that feeling when you realize you’re in love with your best friend, right before he ships off to war...
58 songs, 3.5hrs on spotify
Featuring music by: Lana Del Rey, Lykke Li, Taylor Swift, Zella Day, Florence, Katy Perry, Lord Huron, Cults & more...
/// listen in spotify ///
{{ if you like this, pls. reblog so others can find it too! }}
tagging @chiefharbour for new (jopper playlist) music!