Chapter Text
“You’re going to be late again if you don’t get up now!” He groaned as he shoved his head under his pillow. He just needed 5 more minutes and he’d be ready to go. He promised. He heard the footsteps coming up the stairs and burrowed deeper under the covers.
“Go ‘way,” he mumbled as his bedroom door creaked open, and a light laugh filled the room.
“Fine, but you’re the one that is going to have to sit through another one of Flo’s lectures,” Steve said. Jim could feel the shit eating grin on the kid’s face. He huffed and threw the pillow off his head in the general direction of his kid and could tell he missed by the huffed laugh Steve let out.
“I’m up; I’m up. Get off my case,” the older man grumbled as he sat up on the bed, groaning as the muscles in his lower back protested. He had spent the evening before shooting hoops with Steve, and his body was reminding him he was older than he liked to believe. He somehow had a sixteen year old. He was practically ancient. He heard Steve laugh again as he headed out of the room, his task for the morning accomplished. “Hey, don’t forget I’m working late tonight. I switched with Powell so that I can make it to your game this weekend.” Steve turned and gave him a small smile.
“Yeah, I know.” Jim could sense the “you didn’t have to do that” trying to break through the kid's lips, but he held it back. They’ve been playing the same back and forth game for years. Jim rearranges things to make time for Steve, and Steve apologizes for inconveniencing him. Steve knows how much Jim loves him. Jim knows he knows. Steve knows that Jim would move heaven and Earth for him. But the six year old who’s biological parents hurt him in so many ways still resurfaced now and again. “I’m going over to Nancy’s tonight to study with her. I’ll be back before curfew.”
“Studying, huh?” Jim asked, raising an eyebrow and causing a faint blush to cover the kid’s cheeks.
“Yes, just studying,” he said as he tucked his hands into his pockets, curling his shoulders in a little. “It’s not like that with Nancy. I really like her.” He said quietly, alluding to the reputation they both knew he had. Jim would pay actual cash money to know absolutely nothing about his kid’s romantic adventures. But this was a small town and word got around, which unfortunately always seemed to make it back to him. He also knew after many uncomfortable conversations about being safe and respectful, that a lot of said reputation was very directly tied into Steve’s absolute shit sense of self worth. Initially instilled by the Harringtons, and then moved along by his and Diane’s divorce, and finally nailed into place after he made the Varsity basketball team his freshman year and he suddenly became that fall’s hottest commodity. He never thought he could hold such a great amount of disdain for the teenage girls that used his kid to raise their social status and then dropped him like yesterday’s garbage when they decided he had served his purpose, but there he was actively holding a vendetta against the grocery store check out girl who had started it all back when she was a senior.
“Ok, have fun. And don’t stay up for me,” he said, dropping the matter. Steve smiled and headed down the stairs to grab his stuff for school and head out.
Jim knew how much his kid liked Nancy Wheeler. The Wheeler kids integrated themselves into their lives shortly after Sarah passed. Claudia and Wayne spending time watching Steve while Jim was gone turned into them watching Steve when Jim had to work late more frequently after taking on the role of Chief shortly after Sarah passed, turned into Steve and Dustin forming almost a brotherly relationship while Steve and Eddie became thick as thieves, turned into the babysitter roles reversing when Steve was old enough to watch Dustin while Claudia was out. With Dustin eventually came Mike and Will and Lucas. And with the boys came their siblings, giving Steve and Eddie more people closer to their age to bond with. And Erica, who had convinced Jim at the tender age of six that she had a genuine chance of taking over the world one day. He hoped for good reasons, but the jury was still out years later.
Over the years, when Jim realized the Harringtons were likely never coming back and didn’t feel compelled to kick them out anytime soon, the huge house in Loch Nora became their little group’s headquarters. They would host nights where the older kids would watch movies while the younger ones played games. And when Eddie discovered his dragon game, it turned into intense, energy packed adventure sagas that Jim couldn’t follow with a map. Towards the end of Steve’s eighth grade year, he noticed the puppy eyes he constantly flashed Nancy Wheeler’s way, but Steve never asked her to be more than friends. When Jim would joke about it and ask why, Steve would say that they were friends and he didn’t want to make it weird. And once, in his Sophomore year, when he was tired and a little past tipsy after coming home from a party he swore he wasn’t at, smelling like some girl’s cheap perfume, he told Jim that he didn’t want to ruin her like he ruined everything. Jim camped out on Steve’s bedroom floor that night, unable to bear leaving him alone. He stopped asking after that.
Nancy Wheeler was the single most determined person Jim had ever met in his life, and she only got more intense the older she got. She had been talking about making it big as a journalist for as long as Jim had known her. First with the wide-eyed grandiose of a child, and then later with calculated ten step plans that made Jim’s head hurt. She was a nice girl, and he knew that she cared about his kid a great deal. But when Steve came home a couple weeks into October practically bouncing through the house to tell Jim that Nancy had asked him out, he didn’t trust it. Nancy was a nice girl, and she cared about his son. But Jim was pretty sure she cared about what he could help her achieve more. Steve was a Junior and already had scouts coming out to Bumfuck, Indiana to see him. He had a trust fund he was still entitled to despite the Harrington’s complete lack of parenting. Nancy was determined to make a name for herself, and Steve could help with that. He saw it more as opportunistic than downright malicious. Maybe Jim was being cruel, thinking so lowly of his son’s friend. Of a girl he had watched grow up. And maybe he was reading too much into things after seeing his kid get his heart stomped on time and again. But when all the kids were gathered around his living room throwing dice and blowing through Doritos, it had more recently been Jonathan she was staring at while Steve was staring at her. So Jim didn’t trust it, but he’d been wrong before. He hoped he was this time.
—
Shit absolutely hit the fan before he could get more entangled in his son’s love life. Will Byers went missing, and Steve was beating himself up for not giving him a ride home from the Wheeler’s that night. The kids all had their bikes and had told Steve it was too nice of a night to throw them in the trunk and get a ride home. And Steve was up from sun up to sun down with him that first day helping search. He made his own little search party with Jonathan and Eddie climbing trees and roughing terrains the less agile members of the community couldn’t manage. The kids were dead tired by the end of the night, and Jim spent the night pouring over Joyce’s missing persons report, trying to find any clue he could be overlooking.
The next day, they showed up again; this time with Nancy and her friend Barb in tow. Jim sent them all home when the sun started to go down, saying he didn’t like the idea of kids in the woods in the dark. He told them they could wait at the house for him to get home, and he would give them all an update. He told them to try to relax, that they would find Will. He was probably just scared. He got home later that night to wet pool towels piled up by the back door, empty beer cans in the trash can, Eddie passed out on the couch, a note from Jon on the counter saying that he went home to be with his mom, Barb gone, and Nancy Wheeler creeping down his staircase, her shoes in hand and hair a mess, trying to make as little noise as possible. She stared at him like a deer caught in the headlights, before muttering a “Night, Hop” and scurrying out the front door. The part of him who wanted his kid to unwind and relax managed to over take the chief of police side of him that wanted to bitch about having no respect in his own damn house. He did make a note to stop by the corner store on Patterson to give Brian shit for selling to minors. Again. He couldn’t prove it, but word travels and all that.
Except he never got to talk to Brian. Because Benny Hammond was dead. Suicide the coroner said, but Jim doesn’t buy it. Steve and Jim had eaten at Benny’s every Sunday for the last eight years. Jim knew Benny. Benny was a friend. Benny wouldn’t kill himself. And Will Byers couldn’t just vanish out of thin air. Something was wrong. And it wasn’t stopping.
Later that day, Callahan let him know that Barbara Holland had been reported missing as well. Last seen leaving the Chief of Police’s house which bordered the same woods that Will Byers vanished in. Things like this didn’t happen in Hawkins. His policing mostly consisted of rotating the same five guys through the drunk tank, clocking shoplifters, speeding tickets, busting up high school parties, the occasional domestic disturbance, and catching shit teenagers spray painting in alley ways. All small town America bullshit. But there Jim was with two missing kids, a dead body, and a bunch of cold trails leading nowhere while Joyce Byers went on about how Will was calling her and shorting her phone out. Jim was pretty sure that last one was just some assholes pranking a grieving mother. He would deal with them later.
And then they found another body. Will Byers had fallen into the quarry and was most likely killed on impact. Or maybe he drowned; only an autopsy would tell for sure. Jim wasn't sure which one was a worse fate. Seeing the rescue team pull the small body of a boy that had spent many an evening crafting stories in Jim’s living room hit him harder than he expected. Seeing the pale, waxiness of death settled on his little face reminded him so much of Sarah it hurt. Showing up on Joyce’s door step to deliver the terrible news broke his heart. He had been her before. He’d had to sit there and be told that his child was dead. He had to reconcile the fact that his baby was never coming home. He’d had to watch a brother realize he was an only child now. It was almost too much to bear. But he did, because that moment was about Joyce and Jonathan. It wasn’t his turn to need support.
He didn’t get home until after two that morning. He didn’t notice the bike thrown in the front lawn. He did notice Eddie’s van haphazardly parked in the driveway, but thought nothing of it. It was a common fixture around their house. He didn’t notice that the lights were still on in the house until he got inside and saw Steve sitting on the couch wide awake with red puffy eyes. Dustin was passed out on the couch, head resting on Steve’s thigh as the older boy mindlessly ran his fingers through his unruly curls. Eddie was propped up against the couch scribbling in his notebook with one hand and clutching on to Steve’s ankle, gently running his thumb over the bone with the other. Both of the older boy’s heads snapped towards Jim when they heard the door close.
“Hey, kiddo.” The scene was so similar to him, but not. Like two movies that follow all the same plot points, but have different actors.
“Will’s dead,” Steve whispered, maybe because he didn’t want to wake Dustin or maybe because he didn’t want to say the words. Maybe both; Jim wasn’t sure.
“How did you find out?” he asked, voice just as soft. Steve gestured to the boy asleep on him.
“The boys were out looking for Will on their own again. They saw you – They saw,” Steve cut himself off with a shaky sigh, and Jim felt a rock forming in his stomach. Eddie clutched Steve’s ankle a little tighter, and Steve’s shoulders fell a little, like the older boy was siphoning some of the tension out of his body with just the small touch.
“They saw you all pull him out of the quarry. He showed up at the door a hysterical mess. I called Claudia to let her know he was here while Steve tried to calm him down enough to tell us what was wrong,” Eddie finished. Eddie looked devastated. They both did, but Jim knew that while Dustin was Steve’s favorite, Eddie always held a soft spot for Will.
“They shouldn’t have had to see that. You shouldn’t have had to find out that way. God, I’m so sorry, boys.”
The four of them slept in the living room that night. Restless, but together. Jim didn’t even bitch about what the couch did to his back.
—-
Someone was planting fake bodies in his town. Which, Jim knew, sounded crazy. Shit, he felt crazy taking a knife to the supposed dead body of a kid he’d watched grow up, but there he was slicing his way into an actual government conspiracy. Everything snowballed from there. From fake bodies to evil scientists masquerading as the Department of Energy to portals to the Underworld in fucking Hawkins, Indiana to one little girl with super powers bigger than all of them. A little girl who had been hiding in Mike Wheeler’s basement all week, scared and experiencing the outside world for the first time in her young life. A little girl who said she could help find Will. A little girl who Jim was ashamed to admit he was willing to trade off in order to get a chance to get Will back.
It all came to head with a rescue mission, ending with Will back home and Barbara Holland never to leave the land the kid’s dubbed the Upside Down. A government showdown, ending with three traumatized children, a lot of dead scientists, and Supergirl seemingly vanishing into thin air. And a monster fight, ending with scorch marks on Joyce’s carpet, Nancy Wheeler as Hawkins’ newest gun connoisseur, Eddie & Jonathan possibly making their way onto a government watch list after all the bear traps and ropes they purchased at the local hardware store, and his kid sporting a black eye and a minor concussion from where the Demo-whatever slammed him into the wall while Steve was hitting the creature with a fucking nailbat of all things.
It carried on with more group sleepovers hosted in their living room than ever due to the kids being more connected at the hip than Jim thought was possible. Overheard constant walkie talkie check-ins coming from Steve’s room in the middle of the nights the kids didn’t stay over. And the return of the weekly nightmares Steve used to be prone to in the early years after coming to live with Jim, this time filled with more fantastical monsters than Dick Harrington.
And then their lives drastically changed again.
—---
Steve was keeping secrets which was pretty foreign to Jim. His kid had always struggled with asking for what he needed and showing when things hurt his feelings, but he didn’t keep things from him. Every fight with his friends growing up, every new girlfriend and breakup, every struggle he had with his schoolwork, Steve always came to Jim for advice or just to be a sounding board as he worked through things. Was Jim always the best in the advice department? Probably not. But he loved that Steve trusted him enough to always come to him.
But Steve was being cagey. He was spending more time in his room even when all the kids were over, periodically finding a reason to go upstairs. When Nancy came over to watch a movie, he brought them down to the basement instead of up to his room. When Eddie came over to “not smoke weed, Hop, I swear”, they hung out in the living room. Jim trusted his kid. Steve was a good kid, but he was hiding something. And with everything that had happened with the Upside Down, Jim was nervous.
He gave Steve a week and a half to come to him before he confronted him. School was out for Thanksgiving break, and Jim had asked for Powell to cover for him so he could spend the week with Steve. It was Tuesday morning, and Steve was shoveling Eggos in his mouth faster than Jim could blink.
“Where’s the fire, kid? You too old to eat breakfast with your old man?” Jim joked, and Steve’s eyes widened slightly before they turned into the sad Bambi eyes that never failed to melt Jim’s heart. Damn that kid.
“No, of course not. I was just hungry. Sorry, Dad,” Steve said softly. Even after all the years he had been with Jim, he still couldn’t help himself from curling in a little when he thought he was disappointing him in any way. It still always managed to crack Jim’s heart a little bit.
“Hey, I’m not upset, kiddo. You just,” he paused a little bit, not entirely sure how to bring it up. “You’ve been a little distant lately. I know that with everything that happened with all the monsters and shit has been a lot to process, but I just want to make sure you’re ok.” Steve was silent for a little bit. His eyes flashed between Jim and the stairway a few times and his shoulders tensed up a bit more. Steve was scared to tell him something. Steve had never been scared of Jim.
“I, uh, just, can you give me a minute?” he asked quietly. Jim just nodded, trying not to further spook the boy, and Steve darted up the stairs. He was only gone for about 5 minutes before he came back down, glancing back up the stairs and fidgeting with his hands.
“Hey, bud, take a deep breath. No matter what it is, it’s going to be ok. I’m not going to be mad, ok?” Steve took a deep breath and nodded his head, sparing one last glance up the stairs.
“Pinky swear?” Steve asked softly, the corners of his lips raising just slightly as he held his pinky out. Jim huffed out a small laugh and hooked his pink around the boy’s.
“Pinky swear.” Steve smiled down at where their hands were joined for a moment before unhooking his pinky and boring his eyes into Jim, almost like he was sizing him up.
“You can’t tell anyone, ok?” he finally said quietly, and Jim’s heart rate sped up a little bit immediately jumping to worst case scenarios.
“Steve, is someone hurting you? Did the Harrington’s try to contact you?” Steve’s eyes widened, and he immediately started shaking his head.
“No! It’s nothing like that. I’m fine, Dad. I promise,” he said, Jim’s shoulders relaxed slightly. “I just promised someone I’d keep them safe, and I know you’re the best person to help with that. You always keep everyone safe. But people are still looking for them, and I didn’t know how to tell you what I did, and I don’t know what to do anymore because if they find them it will be my fault,” he rushed out in one breath.
“Steve, I promise, I’ll do everything in my power to keep your friend safe. You just have to give me some info here, kiddo.” Steve nodded and looked between Jim and the stairs one more time before muttering a quiet “ok” to himself. He walked back over to the stairway and looked up at something, or seemingly someone.
“You can come down. It will be ok; I promise.” Steve shot one more quick glance to Jim before holding his hand out. Jim saw a small hand clasp Steve’s before a little girl with a buzzcut wearing misfitting clothes that looked like something Dustin had left there in the past stepped into view. She kept her eyes low to the ground in a way that was so similar to the first time Jim had met Steve.
“Dad, this is Eleven. El. She’s the one the boys were telling us about. I found her freezing in the woods not long after she went missing, and I couldn’t leave her out there, especially with the government and the lab still looking for her. She’s been staying here, and I’ve been taking care of her. We can let her stay here until it’s safe, right? We’ll protect her?” Steve was looking at him with those big, sad eyes again. And the little girl, the girl he was using as a bartering tool just weeks ago, was slowly curling into Steve’s side the longer he talked. He took a step towards the kids and crouched down to be closer to Eleven’s, El’s, eye level.
“Hi, El, I’m Jim Hopper. You can call me Hop,” he spared a glance to Steve, who seemed to be holding his breath. “We’re going to keep you safe. Let’s see what we can do about getting you some clothes and a room of your own. That sound good?” She glanced up at him long enough to shoot him a small smile, and then quickly wrapped her thin arms around Steve’s middle, hiding her face in his stomach. Steve patted her on the head and almost blinded Jim with his smile.
—-
Life was a whirlwind after that. El quickly went from a girl they were hiding from the government to a member of their family. Steve liked to say the day Jim agreed to let her stay was the day they became a family, but it took a little longer for Jim. There was a part of him that felt like he was trying to patch her in where Sarah used to be. He laid up some nights feeling like he was betraying his girl for so easily letting El make room for herself in their lives. There were times when he almost felt resentment towards the little girl as she flowed through a home Sarah never got to see and - after many hushed arguments with Steve were the boy stressed how it wasn’t helping her to keep her isolated from the kids and make her hide when they were over, and how they were already all keeping the world's biggest secret, what's one more - slotted herself into a group of friends Sarah never got to meet. He hid it well from Steve and El, but it was simmering under the surface. It made Jim hate himself a little, but he couldn’t help it.
Until one morning about seven or so months after she moved in. It was Father’s Day. Jim was sitting at the dining room table sipping on some coffee while Steve was trying to teach El how to make waffles from scratch to be in compliance with his strict “no microwave meals on holidays and birthdays” rule. There was laughter bouncing off the walls, and when the kids brought the platter of misshapen waffles in, Steve and El both had batter in their hair. After they had eaten way too many waffles with way too much whipped cream and syrup to satisfy both Jim and El’s sweet tooth, the kids gave him their gifts. Steve had gotten him a new pocket knife with his name engraved on it, said he had been saving up for it for a while with his allowance and he hoped he liked it. As if there was a possibility he wouldn’t. And El had passed him over a simple handmade card with a flower messily drawn on the front.
“Dustin helped me write it,” she said softly as she handed it over.
Inside, written in shaky penmanship, it said, ”Hop - Thank you for being our Dad when you did not have to. Love, El”
Jim Hopper was not a very outwardly emotional man outside of when it was pertaining to his children, and that moment was when Jim realized El officially had found her way into that category. She wasn’t there to take Sarah’s place. She was there to carve out her own, separate little part of Jim’s heart. Just like Steve had all those years ago.