Work Text:
"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.
"Whadya 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."