Chapter Text
He gets sick on a Tuesday.
He remembers it for two reasons: the first because he doesn’t remember getting sick in the last five years at least despite treating his body like shit for longer than he can remember; and the second because it happens just one day before he’s supposed to take Joyce out for their first date.
It’s that second point that leaves him breathless in a way that he knows has nothing to do with the fact that he feels hot and cold at the same time, with the wheeze in his lungs that makes Jane wince.
It has everything to do with the fact that part of him still doesn’t believe Joyce actually said yes, that doesn’t believe he managed to get the words out at all.
“Of course this would happen now,” he grumbles to himself, wondering how it is he got to be the target of the universe’s long string of practical jokes.
He grabs the edges kitchen sink to steady himself, leaning over it as he takes a deep breath. His vision blurs, chest constricting painfully and –
He blinks, and suddenly he’s sitting next to Joyce. The need for a cigarette hits him heavy, and his hands fumble in his jacket until he realizes that he’s given them up.
Joyce smiles at the movement - it’s a real one, however small, and his heart speeds up at the sight of it.
“Hop,” she says teasingly, her eyes crinkling, “we pinky promised in front of the kids, remember?”
He rolls his eyes.
“That damn science teacher of theirs,” he says, making sure to grumble because he knows it makes her laugh.
She does, and he can’t help but smile at her.
“I think it’s sweet, them wanting to make sure we live a long and healthy life.” She knocks her shoulder into his. “I’ve never heard Jane talk so much as when she and Will were giving us their little presentation.”
He blows out an exasperated breath, though he smiles as he does it. It had been endearing – the way Jane and Will had sat him and Joyce down at the kitchen table, serious expressions on their faces as they presented a tri-fold posterboard on the dangers of smoking and just exactly why they both needed to quit immediately.
Truthfully, it was nothing he hadn’t known for years – known and couldn’t really be bothered to care.
But Jane had looked at him so earnestly, with those wide brown eyes and open features, and had grabbed his hand and said that all she was asking was for the opportunity for him to live to see her college graduation, to walk her down the aisle and to one day throw a ball around with his grandkids.
It’d obviously been a phrase taken directly from whatever lecture their science teacher had given that week – he’s not even sure she really knows what it means to throw a ball around – but she had given it to him so sincerely and so seriously that he thinks he could’ve been convinced to reach out and bring the furthest star in the sky to her doorstep if that’s what she had asked for.
Which honestly – some days – seems easier than giving up a daily, hourly habit that he’s been nursing for over 20 years now. But she had made him promise, and then she and Will had made him and Joyce pinky promise in front of them both that they’d quit – a childish act that they all approached with the solemnity of a holy ceremony.
And he’d kept that promise, as hard as it’s been, as incredibly grumpy as he’s been.
But dammit if he couldn’t use a cigarette right at this moment.
Joyce must see it too, because she just reaches into her pocket, takes out two lollipops and hands one over to him.
He raises an eyebrow at her.
“What the hell is this?”
“It’s a lollipop, Hop,” she says matter-of-factly, before unwrapping hers and popping it into her mouth.
He gives her a wry look.
“Because I’m a ten year old child and I’ve just been to the doctor?”
She huffs a breath.
“No, we’re trying to prevent doctor’s visits, remember?” She reaches over and looks at the wrapper, then pushes it back towards him with a satisfied look on her face. “Jonathan read that lollipops can be a good way to distract from cravings, so I went out and got a bunch for us.”
She looks at him expectantly, waiting for him to put a lollipop in his mouth like it isn’t a ridiculous thing for a grown man to walk around with a tiny dum-dum in his mouth.
But he’s long stopped even trying to push back against Joyce when she has that look on her face, and if he’s honest with himself, it’s been almost just as long since he’s even wanted to.
So he unwraps the candy and pops it in his mouth, pleasantly surprised when it turns out to be blue raspberry.
“It’s a shitty replacement for a cigarette, but it’s not the worst thing ever.” He swirls it around to the inside of his cheek so he can talk like he doesn’t have marbles in his mouth. “It helps that this is my favorite flavor.”
Joyce smiles.
“I know,” she says, glancing over at him, an expression fluttering behind her eyes that he can’t quite define. He holds her gaze for a moment longer, trying to figure it out, but she drops her eyes and quickly checks her watch before standing up.
He gets up slowly beside her, taking the lollipop out of his mouth and desperately wishing it were a cigarette instead. At least he’d feel like himself, have a way to calm his nerves instead of being a jittery mess who can’t help but turn over in his mind over and over again the fact that Joyce remembers his favorite candy flavor from when they were kids growing up together.
“See you at dinner next week?” she asks, an uncertain lilt to the words even though he and Jane have been coming to the Byers house every week for the past 11 months now.
He nods, his tongue suddenly too thick in his mouth to say anything.
She gives him a tight-lipped smile and a nod, shoving her hands in her pockets as she gets ready to head back over to Melvald’s.
He rocks back on his heels and feels like a complete idiot for being the nervous sweaty mess that he is, but he manages to reach out and rest a hand on her shoulder before she’s out of reach.
“Joyce,” he says quietly, her name coming out tender than he means to.
She turns around and glances up at him, a look that might be – softness, hopefulness – in her eyes. It gives him just the push he needs.
“Do you want to go out to dinner?”
Only the words come out jumbled and slurred, like he has that damn lollipop in his mouth still even though it’s resting between his thumb and forefinger, so it comes out sounding like, “Doyouwannagoouttodinner” instead.
He just barely stops himself from groaning out loud, settles for scrubbing a hand against his face instead.
“With me, I mean.” He clears his throat. “Just the two of us.”
Her eyes are wide, and she stares at him for just long enough that he starts to panic, calls himself an idiot in his head at least half a dozen times before Joyce reaches over and wraps his hand on her shoulder with one of her own.
She smiles at him, an open, radiant thing that he doesn’t think he’ll be able to recover from for the rest of the goddamn day.
“I’d love that, Hop.”
He feels his own smile split his face, so wide that his damn cheeks are hurting.
“Ok. You would. Perfect. Great.” He sounds like an idiot and he knows it, but he can’t find it in him to care too much right now. He squeezes her hand. “Wednesday sound good? Pick you up at seven?”
She looks down and huffs a laugh, a pale pink blush rising in her cheeks before she looks back up at him and nods, her eyes bright with happiness.
“Seven is perfect.”
He isn’t sure how he manages to smile even harder, but somehow he does.
He hesitates for a moment, then reaches out and brushes his thumb against the top of her cheek, where the blush is lighting across her skin.
Which is the exact point that he knows that this is a dream rather than a memory.
He’d wanted to reach over and brush his fingertips across her skin, a movement he’d thought about with increasing frequency over the last few months. But there’d been a crackle on his walkie, and so he’d stepped back from her instead, his hand dropping down to his belt as his smile turned apologetic.
She’d brushed it off, of course, that bright smile still on her face as she’d mouthed see you Wednesday before rushing back off to the store.
It’s that smile that holds fast in his memory, that he clings to even as the rest of the world goes dark.