Chapter Text
El watches Hopper and Joyce watches El.
It's become a ritual of sorts. Not that Joyce doesn't watch Hopper, she does, but Hopper remembers Joyce. Hopper knows Joyce. He doesn't know everything , but he knows her, he has patches and fleeting memories that pass by him like ships on the water. Poor El is like a ghost, there's traces of her in the way he looks at her sometimes, but other than that, she's nothing but a teenager to him.
And, Hopper's never been the best with kids.
"You can go talk to him," Joyce tells her one morning over breakfast. It's a Saturday morning, Will's asked if they can bike over to the local arcade and Hopper's still asleep. El concentrates on her orange juice a little too hard and Joyce wonders if she's trying to move it. "Honey?" El's gaze flicks up to Joyce's face and she shakes her head.
"He doesn't know me."
Joyce is stuck between a rock and a hard place. Losing Hopper was as much of a blow to his surrogate daughter as to her; just because she'd known him longer didn't mean that she had any monopoly on grief. Cleaning out his cabin with El was one of the hardest things she'd ever had to do. Standing by his grave holding her hand while they lowered in an empty coffin was second on her list.
(And, what about Bob? Joyce lies awake at night wondering if one level of longing, of guilt, of mourning had overtaken the other, and that just started the cycle off all over again.)
"Sweetheart, if you don't talk to him he never will. He's made progress. At the hospital, here." Joyce offers El a small smile, which she returns. "If you keep ignoring him, he's going to get grumpy. You know as well as I do he's as stubborn as a mule."
El nods. "Stubborn."
"So, how about you and Will go to the arcade after lunch? You could talk to Hopper when he's had breakfast and--"
"And what?" The voice makes her jump and she turns a little too quickly with the spatula in her hand and splashes bacon grease up the wall. "Jesus, Hop!" Her exclamation is good natured, but still he flinches, grimacing and rubbing at the back of his neck.
"Sorry. Didn't mean to startle you."
His eyes immediately dart to El, sitting at the breakfast table with wide, imploring eyes, waiting for him to greet her with a hand through her hair and a gentle smile. Instead, he watches her fearfully and Joyce isn't sure which of them to run to - so she stays put.
"Hey, so, El has some things she wanted to show you." El's head turns and she frowns at her, unsure of what thing she has to show him, as Hopper nods his head warily.
"Oh yeah?"
"Mhm. She's got pretty much everything from your cabin. Boxes of stuff, isn't that right, El?"
El slowly looks back at Hopper and nods. "Yes. Lots. Clothes and... books, and... things."
Joyce's heart breaks for her. She knows she's nervous, she can see it in the way El almost crumbles in on herself. She didn't mean to put her under pressure, but without a little nudge in the right direction she would've hidden from him for the rest of her life. Not that Joyce blames her. But, she's come to realise that this Hopper, the one they've got now, isn't going to change.
They have to learn to live with him, or she worries that he won't live at all.
"Uh. Sure." He and El share a look for a moment before he stares at Joyce, eyes begging her to help. But, this time, she's leaving him on his own.
El shuffles out as Hopper sits down and it leaves the kitchen in an eerie kind of quiet; the kind Joyce hasn't experienced for a long, long time.
She plates up some burned toast, and eggs, and bacon and puts it down in front of Hopper as he hunches over, staring at the back of the ketchup bottle. "Mm. Thanks."
There's a long, pregnant pause as she goes back to clear the kids' dirty dishes away before he speaks again, his mouth full of food. That's a good sign, at least.
"I'm not sure that's such a good idea.
Joyce turns a little and watches him from the corner of her eye. "What isn't?"
"Me and... El."
She sighs. "Why not?"
Hopper shrugs his shoulders, shovelling eggs into his mouth. "Not exactly best dad in the world material."
Because he let his first daughter die, because he's a drunk, because he's an addict. Joyce has heard the story before. Another cycle that she's going to break; pity and self loathing are gone, left behind in Hawkins. She's not got the time for it anymore.
"Yet you spent two years looking after her. A year on your own. Without telling me, which, really, is a feat, given when I found out about you keeping her you couldn't keep your mouth shut about it." She offers a small, crooked smile and he returns it. Like father like daughter. "As if I'm the only woman you know with kids."
"Only woman I know with good kids, Joyce." She can barely understand him as he scoffs his second piece of toast, but his words bring a flickering warmth to her chest. "Never thought I'd try that shit again."
"Well you did. You did, after everything, so count yourself lucky. Not many men get a second chance, and she's a great girl, El, she's a great girl."
"Mhm."
"Don't let her down, Hop."
"I won't."
Joyce turns to look at him now and he looks so determined that she can't help but smile. He won't. She knows it. He won't.
He swallows his mouthful, wincing a little. She's told him not to shove so much in, but he went without for so long in the bunker that she can't blame him.
"What's that smile for?" His brow furrows low over his eyes and anyone else might think him genuinely annoyed. But, Joyce knows him better than that. He pulled that shit in high school and it didn't fly with her then.
"Nothing."
She turns back to her washcloth and the crumbs on the side. Behind her, his chair scrapes back across the floor and socked feet pad across the carpet toward her. Joyce feels the radiating warmth of him on her back; she doesn't need to turn around to know he's standing behind her.
His voice is low and gravelly and something deep inside of her clenches.
"You haven't smiled like that in a long time, Joyce."
She shrugs her shoulders. "Is a woman not allowed to smile, Hop?"
"Didn't say that. But, you don't."
That brings a little frown to her face; he's right, she's not smiled, truly, for a long while. Her smiles have been reserved for their little family, but just to keep everyone placated. They never mean much, just a quick flick of the corners of her mouth to show them she's okay. To lie.
Joyce throws the cloth onto the side and swivels her hips until she's turned, penned in by him. He looks so much healthier now, the yellowing pallor of his skin disappeared a few weeks after they brought him home. His clothes fit snugger and she'd never realised how much she likes it. Bigger, softer, warmer. She smiles and he smiles too; it reaches his eyes, crinkles the wrinkles in the corners and his hand moves to take hers where it rests on the counter behind her. His hands are bigger, softer, warmer than hers and she can't help but curl her fingers around his.
Joyce has always taken notice of him; the way he moves, the way he holds himself, the way his clothes hug him in all the right places. Even in high school, even with Lonnie fucking Byers' tongue against her neck she watched him down the end of the corridor with his blazer tucked over his shoulder, arm resting against the locker above him as he pinned little blonde bombshell Chrissy Carpenter against it with nothing but a stare and a cock of his head.
He could get all the girls he wanted. He still could. He did, but then he stopped.
Joyce told herself it was because at least a small part of his soul had been soothed when he'd brought her boy back to her. She hadn't much noticed until he'd left, then she studied every minute detail of the last two years of their lives. His life, mostly. She'd lived her life and she didn't much want to go through it again.
As she looks up at him, his face shadowed and low, his gaze burning holes through her, Joyce wonders, selfishly, if he stopped because of her.
No, not because of her. For her.
Hopper looks at her, and she looks at him. He starts to lean in toward her, hot breath against her face and Joyce tilts her head up, eyes flickering across his face and he's so close to her and -
"Mom! Have you got any quarters?"
Hopper immediately straightens and Joyce can't see his eyes anymore with how low his brow is. Joyce peers around him to see a flustered looking Will, clearly having opened his mouth before realising what was happening in the kitchen. What almost happened.
"In my purse, sweetie. Don't take too many, alright?"
Her son nods his head vigorously before scarpering back into the living room, cheeks a deep shade of red, and Joyce can't help but chuckle.
As she looks back to Hopper, she notices his cheeks are a similar colour and it takes her by surprise; she can't remember the last time she saw him blush.
*
Hopper sits himself on the couch in the living room, watching the TV blankly, stomach churning as he waits for the sound of soft feet padding on wood and the arrival of his so-called-surrogate-daughter, El. He's tried to remember her, to knit together the fragments of memories that wash around like silt in a tide pool, but he can't. There's his parents, his mother, mostly, Joyce, even Jonathan and Will, but no El.
When he looks at her sometimes - really looks at her - he sees something of his mother behind those big brown eyes and his heart twists uncomfortably. Like he does with Joyce, he has an ineffable need to protect this girl, but, like Joyce, he's very aware she doesn't much need it. Joyce has told him how she fought for them; for him, for everyone. How she nearly killed herself, time and time again, how she sewed up fissures in time and space and reality, how she found her boy (and how he, a fat cop from Indiana, found him too).
The way Joyce looks at him sometimes makes him want to ask if they'd become something more. If, maybe, he'd gathered up this apparent lion's courage and asked her out. His memories waver somewhere around 1980 and he's pretty sure she wouldn't have swapped out drunk a-hole Lonnie Byers for drunk a-hole Jim Hopper, however good a fuck he was.
Not that Joyce is letting him drink, anyhow. "It doesn't mix well with the meds," she says, but he thinks the real reason is that she's scared the drink might do something worse to his head. Turn him into a REAL a-hole, the kind that punches through walls and tears up the carpets, that blames her for every damned thing wrong with him and, damn, even blind drunk he wouldn't do that to her.
He's not Lonnie Byers. Even fucked up. Even wrong . He respects her too damn much for that.
So, maybe it's not that, Hopper muses to himself in the fog he calls his brain, and lifts his apple juice with a shaky hand. Maybe she likes to pretend the bottle of red she keeps at the back of the cupboard is her own brand of sobriety. Maybe she wants to make sure he doesn't slip into the kind of self destructive behaviour she witnessed after Sara.
Hopper snorts to himself and shakes his head, taking a sip of his juice and pretending it's scotch. Fucking Freud. He's been spending too much time 'round Owens.
"Hop?"
A small voice from behind him breaks him from his reverie of self discovery and he looks over to see El standing there in an oversized shirt (is that his? Damn kid, raiding his closet again. Tugging at his heartstrings.) fiddling with the sleeves. "Can we... talk?"
Hopper nods gruffly. "Sure." Guess I got no choice, he wants to say, but El looks sort of halfway happy for a moment and he doesn't want to knock the poor girl while she's down. "You like that shirt, huh?" He tilts his head toward her and she looks down at it, as if she's only just noticed she's wearing it.
"Oh. Yes." El makes a move to start taking it off and Hop quickly holds a hand up.
"No, no, you keep it. Looks better on you than it does me. Dunno if flannel suits me much." He snorts, the corner of his lips curling upwards and El mirrors him, offering up a little smile that does something strange to the beating of his heart.
His brain is screaming: run. It does that a lot, ever since he came back. The adrenaline pumps through his system and his eyes bug out. Like the guys that came back from Vietnam, he says to Owens when he's let himself drop his guard, but his brain don't work the same and instead he can't tell up from down and Joyce is holding him as he cries naked in the shower 'cause the bar of soap slipped out his hand and he thinks he's in a goddamn Russian prison again.
Instead, he looks at her and thinks, holy shit, if this is the girl I raised then I mustn't have done such a bad job after all.
El fiddles with something at her wrist and Hopper's brow furrows. He's not noticed it before - perhaps he's not been looking close enough, perhaps she's hidden it from him, but there, beneath the baggy sleeve of his shirt is...
"What's that?"
El flinches a little, as if he's broken her from her thoughts and she looks at him with those big, brown eyes again, and she's frightened, and he doesn't want that. "You... said that your Sara... she... uh..." She squirms a little, thinking he might snap at her, but he doesn't. Hopper's eyes go wide for a moment, then he starts to smile.
"I gave you that?"
El nods. "Yes. You told me, about the black hole, and you gave me it."
"Huh. Who'd have thought?"
She looks confused. "Do you want it back?"
He's thrown for a second; of course he does, it's one of the few things he has of his little girl, he wants to keep it with him until the day he dies and even then, not let anyone pry it from his cold body, but Hopper looks at her, this girl, this force of nature, this block in his memory and he shakes his head.
"You keep it. Looks better on you anyways." He takes a moment as relief floods El's face and he likes that. He likes that a lot. "Joyce told me what we did; my grandfather's cabin, keeping you there, away from your friends. She said you got yourself a boyfriend."
El nods her head, puffing her chest a little. "Yes. Mike. You like Mike now."
"I'm not sure about that."
"Yes! You do! You said it, at the Mall, you said--" She suddenly stops and Hopper frowns.
"Said what?"
El opens and closes her mouth for a moment and a sorrow he's not seen comes across her face. "You said..." And, like that, she gets to her feet and comes to him, kneeling up on the couch cushions beside him and puts her arms around his neck. For a moment he freezes, unsure of what to do, but muscle memory takes over and he slowly pulls her in for a hug that makes her suck in a sharp breath and let out months and months of sorrow.
"Hey. Hey, kid, it's okay." But, it's not, and he can feel prickles of it in the back of his throat and the corners of his eyes. "It's okay." His hand finds the back of her head and he strokes fingers through her hair as she cries. "It's okay. It's alright." Joyce watches with a pair of his pants in her hands from the kitchen doorway and brushes away a tear of her own. "I'm here. Not going anywhere, hm? Don't think any of you'd let me leave the house by myself anymore." It doesn't make her stop, and Hopper just swallows, pressing his mouth to the side of her head and placing a small kiss against her head. "I'm not going anywhere."
A small voice says "Dad" in his ear and Hopper's heart feels like it's about to burst. He holds El and El holds him and though he doesn't remember the cabin, or the Mall, or any of it, he knows her. The warmth of her, and the strength of her, and the way her small hand tucks into his and it's something .
*
Will gave up on El coming to the arcade hours ago and, instead, went on his own. Joyce's heart skipped a beat as he said goodbye, but she knows deep down this isn't Hawkins and the real, human threats out there are nothing compared to Demogorgon's and Mind Flayers, so she only worries a little bit these days.
They both leave El, who's fallen asleep on Hopper, and Hopper, who's fallen asleep with his mouth open and looks positively content. Joyce covers them with a blanket and El stirs a little, making a small noise, and Joyce's heart swells about fifty sizes. She might set up a chalkboard in the kitchen: All the Times Joyce Horowitz Was Right. Another check to her. Well done Horowitz, another one to you.
She goes to put clothes away, putting Will's and El's on their beds for them to tidy away themselves. She moves to Hopper's room - well, Jonathan's room, but he's not coming back until Christmas, he says, and she'd rather give up her room to her eldest than have Hopper sleep on the couch. Unlike the kids, she puts his clothes away herself, spending the time running her thumb and forefinger over his jeans, his shirts, his vests and pyjamas, feeling the soft fabric and breathing in the smell of him that still clings to the clothing even after a good wash.
She's lost in her own thoughts when there's a low grumbling cough behind her and she pulls a pair of his boxers away from her face and tosses them across the room.
"I wasn't--"
Hopper's smirking at her, the ass. "You weren't what? Sniffing my undies?"
Joyce purses her lips, desperately trying to think of a comeback and draws a blank. "No, I wasn't.
He looks at her with crinkles at the corners of his eyes again and Joyce thinks, I love you, you idiot, I damn well love you.
"I, uh, just wanted to say thanks for... getting the kid to talk to me. Worked out alright in the end, I guess." He shuffles on his feet and Joyce instinctively reaches out to take his hand. When Hopper doesn't pull away, she makes a note: a Good Day. "Joyce, I... owe you everything."
Her eyes widen a little and she quickly shakes her head. "I'm just paying you back for what you did for Will," she starts, and his shoulders sag, and oh no, that sounds like it's no more than a quick exchange of thanks for that 's. "No. No, I mean... it's so good to have you back, and..."
"Joyce," Hopper says quietly, cutting her off, and she blinks.
"Yeah?"
"Before everything. Before I... went. Did we-- did we ever--" He gestures between the two of them with his free hand and it takes Joyce a few long, excruciating seconds to glean his meaning. Her eyebrows shoot up and Hopper looks like he wants the ground to swallow him whole.
"Oh! Oh, no! No! Well--"
"Well?"
"Well, yeah, I mean... we had a date."
"A date?"
"Yeah. You... asked me out on a date. But, not a date. As friends. But, that's what you said, but you didn't mean it, and I didn't realise, so I went to see Scott Clarke, you know, the kids' science teacher?"
Hopper looks bewildered and nods his head, so Joyce continues.
"Well, I went to see him instead, and stood you up. But, I didn't know I was standing you up. I mean, I did , because I knew you were there, but I didn't know it was a date. Do you see?"
"Uh..."
"So, when we were in the Russian base, I said, well, we deserved to celebrate, so I asked you out on a date. To Enzo's."
"Enzo's. Really?"
"Well, it's where you asked me out, so..."
" Really ?" He pulls a face, clearly thinking back to the tiny portions and overpriced wine. "Enzo's, really?"
"Yeah," Joyce says and huffs out a laugh. "You bought a new shirt. You wore a linen suit jacket. Jeans. You really went all out."
"Huh," he repeats, as if none of this sounds particularly plausible and Joyce must be making the whole thing up. "So... we were going out on a date."
"Yeah."
"Do you... still want to go on that date?"
And, that takes Joyce by surprise. She lets out a little noise, half "Did I hear you right?" and half "God yes", and stares at him. "Are... you sure?"
"Yes. Why? Do you not want--"
"No. No, I didn't say that."
"Well, you don't sound like you want to--"
"No, Hop, no, I didn't say that."
"Okay. You didn't say it, but you sounded like--"
"I want to go out on a date with you. Okay?"
There's that smirk again and Joyce squeezes his hand a little too hard. He laughs and twists it until his fingers are interlaced with hers and he takes one step into her personal space. Just enough to get the hairs on the back of her neck to stand on end. It's the Hopper she remembers mixed with the Hopper she's grown to love again.
"Okay. Okay." His voice is deep and rumbles in his chest as his stomach presses softly against her. "You could've been a little more romantic when you asked, though, Horowitz."
"Fuck you, Hopper," she says, her finger gently digging into the softness of his chest. "Yours wasn't exactly any better."
"I doubt that."
"You doubt it, huh?" she laughs, feeling her cheeks aching delightfully. "You, Mr. Suave, coming along sweeping me off my feet, you think that's how it went down?"
Hopper puffs his chest out and she nearly falls back. "I could get any woman in Hawkins I wanted."
"Only the once."
"Only the once, but I got them."
Joyce scrunches up her nose. "I think that's pretty misogynistic, Hop."
"Is it?"
"Yeah, it kinda is, makes us sound like prizes."
Hopper ruminates for a second, chewing his cheek before saying. "So, if I said you were the best prize of all, you wouldn't like that?"
Joyce's eyebrows shoot up for a moment, then she tries to stifle a smile. "I'm not a trophy--"
"I didn't say you were."
She watches him for a moment, stood so close to her she can feel the warmth radiating off of him, feel the rise and fall of his chest, feel the thrumming of his heartbeat beneath his skin. He watches her back, the kind of curiosity lost beneath the shadow of his brow and Joyce swallows.
And, tilts her head back just a little as Hopper leans down and presses his lips to hers.
He smells just like his boxers and Joyce isn't sure that should be the first thought going through her head. Her hands find the sides of his jaw, scratching at the stubble there and God, his lips are soft. Like high school. Fuck.
Hopper pulls back, blinking, a little dumbfounded, looking at her like a dopey dog and Joyce can't help but reply in kind and bark out a laugh. He starts to smile, calming, realising that she's not about to yell at him for taking liberties. Not that she yells anymore. She doesn't have the stomach for it.
"That was okay, right?" he asks and Joyce wants to wrap him up in her arms and never let him go.
Instead, she just nods her head "That was okay. Yeah."
*
They have their date after all, in a little Chinese place in town. The waiter gives Hopper a stern glance over his notepad as he pronounces everything wrong and keeps nudging her foot underneath the table to get her to stop. The stifling giggles do nothing for his composure, but everything for his confidence and he wildly - and loudly - exclaims he'll have the Low Mine to which Joyce dissolves into giggles and the waiter tells them he'll come back later .
It's comfortable, easy, slipping into old ways but with the hazy aura of the new life they've had to get used to.
"You look good, Jim," Joyce tells him after they've had a little too much wine and a blush creeps over his cheeks as he smiles sloppily.
"So do you, Joyce."
They walk home hand in hand, Joyce holding her heels with Hopper's jacket over her shoulders. It's not the same white linen, but it's a light brown and matches the wisps of his hair that ripple in the wind.
Maybe he could wear it to Jonathan's graduation. Maybe she shouldn't have drunk so much wine. She's getting sappy.
They end up sitting on the bench on the porch for hours , sometimes in silence, sometimes kissing, sometimes her telling him the little things he's missed. The little things he wants to remember.
"I love you," she says, as he watches the sunrise and she watches him.
"As I am?" Hopper asks, tearing his eyes away from the broad strokes of orange, and red, flaming across the morning sky. His eyes are wide and oh so blue, and God she could drown in them right now.
Instead, she just nods. Just nods. "As you are," she says. "Just as you are."
Hopper nods and lifts her hand to place a delicate kiss on her knuckles. "I love you too. Just as you are."
Together, they watch the sunrise and slowly Hopper snakes his fingers between hers and squeezes her hand.
Just as he is, Joyce thinks. And, just as she is, too.
Perfectly, unequivocally, destructively damaged. Together.