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Joyce couldn’t believe they made it out of the prison.
Granted, it was a damn miracle they were able to get in there in the first place and get Hopper (and who she assumed to be Enzo) out and away from the demogorgon.
She couldn’t stop playing the moment she was face to face with Hopper for the first time in almost a year over in her head. And that hug, the feeling of it still lingered.
Joyce is pulled out of her thoughts when Murray, driving like a maniac, hits a bump and she’s tossed around a bit.
“Hey can you be a little more careful there Murray?” She scolds.
“Sorry Joyce, but we’re running from the KGB, I’m gonna keep flooring it until we reach the motel.”
He had a point, but she didn’t want to end up in an accident. Especially if they were being followed.
She turns to Jim, who was quietly sitting next to her, trying to process whether or not this was another one of his many dreams he had of her coming to get him out of that prison or if it was really real.
Joyce reaches out and places her hand on his leg gently, hoping it wasn’t the many parts of him that were covered in painful cuts and bruises. “I”m sorry we can’t take you to the hospital, Hop.”
Hop. She’d said it once before after they pulled apart from their hug and she really took a look at him, but hearing it again was music to his ears. He never thought he would.
“It’s fine. Can’t exactly take a prisoner still in his prison jumpsuit to a hospital,” Hopper replies. “Besides, Murray’s the only one of us who’s fluent and who knows what he’d tell the nurses,” he jokes, trying to lighten the mood.
Her lips curve into a small smile and she moves her hand from his leg to his own hand. It was rougher than the last time she held it and immediately she notices some calluses, but she doesn’t mind, she just squeezes it and waits for their arrival to the closest motel.
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When arriving at the motel, Joyce makes sure Murray gets him and Enzo their own room and one for her and Hopper. There wasn’t a chance in hell that she was letting him out of her sight.
That’s exactly what happens, she and Hopper settle into their own room while Murray and Enzo take one just a few doors down.
Upon opening the door to the room, the two are greeted with the sight of one queen sized bed.
“Oh, uh, should we go ask for a room with two?” Jim immediately asks.
Truth be told, he didn’t know why he was still acting like he didn’t have feelings for her. Or like she didn’t have them for him. But then again, they never even made it to their first date so sharing a bed seemed like a jump.
“No. It’s not like we’re strangers, we’ve certainly shared a bed before,” she reminds him.
Okay yeah. That brings him back to the one time when they got pretty intimate when they were teenagers but that was a long time ago. A lot had changed.
“Fair enough,” he replies, deciding it was best to not argue. Besides, who was he to turn down the comfort of a bed? He hadn’t seen a mattress in a long eight months.
Hopper steps into the motel room and Joyce comes in behind him, closing the door and locking it tight behind them.
“I’m uh…” He turns to her for a moment, “I’m gonna go take a really hot shower.”
Joyce just smiles, knowing that he’d probably been looking forward to a nice shower for quite some time. “Go ahead. I’ll be here.”
While Jim is showering, Joyce decides that she wants to clean up his wounds. The shower would help get all the dried blood and dirt off of him, but she really wanted to be sure any cuts he had were cleaned up and taken care of. Only issue was: she had no bandaids and no rubbing alcohol.
She looks around for a minute and notices that there was a mini fridge surprisingly. Maybe there was alcohol in that. Wasn’t exactly the kind she wanted, but it would do.
Joyce walks over to the fridge and opens it to find two small bottles of Vodka. “Course,” she mutters and grabs them.
Once he’s out of the shower and emerges from the bathroom, back in his prison jumpsuit, Joyce instructs him to sit down.
“Am I in trouble?” Hopper asks with a raised brow.
“What? No no,” Joyce says and walks into the steamy bathroom. She grabs a rag from the little rack of towels and comes back out.
“I’m going to make sure all the cuts on you are cleaned,” she explains as grabs the bottles of vodka from the bedside table and walks over to him.
Hopper shakes his head, “you don’t have to do that, Joyce, I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine. I know the shower helped, but you’ve been hurt and I imagine you’ve got cuts in a number of places and I’m gonna make sure they’re clean.”
“Joyce…” He half whines.
“James…” She replies sternly.
That almost knocks the wind out of him because no one has called him James in a very long time. He wasn’t even sure if Diane ever called him that. And honestly, he hated when people called him James. It never felt right and it brought him back to a childhood he’d been trying to outrun for years.
Except it was different hearing it come from Joyce. He actually liked it? But he wasn’t sure he was ready to admit that.
“Did you just call me James?”
Joyce nods as she opens the first small bottle of vodka, “yep I did James, now quit pushing back and let me take care of you.”
Hopper gives in. Mostly because his energy to fight was on hold now that he wasn’t in the prison anymore. And that he could relax— at least for tonight.
So, he takes a seat on the bed and lets her stand over him.
She takes her time tending to his wounds. Her touch is gentle and she does what she can not to cause any more irritation than there already was to his skin.
He winced at every application of the Vodka to the open wounds, but he stayed quiet for most of it and relished in being taken care of by someone he cared deeply for.
When Joyce finally gets to the cut on his temple, Jim says, “I can’t believe you came all the way to Russia just to get me out of a prison that was supposed to be inescapable.”
“Well you know,” she wipes his temple down again, “the demogorgon being there was a big help, sorta had them distracted while we got away.”
“I mean it. I mean you’re basically my miracle,” he insists.
Joyce glances away from the cut and into his eyes, “Miracle might be underselling it a bit, I was thinking more like your hero,” she jokes.
“Okay my miracle and my hero.” Jim wasn’t going to go into how he and Enzo had a back and forth about how they would need a miracle to get out of being killed by the demogorgon, but he was still going to keep referring to her as that.
She pulls her hands away from his temple and closes the second small bottle of vodka that only had a little less than half left in it. She then places both the bottle and the rag aside. “You didn’t think I was just going to let you die there did you?”
“I‘ll be honest, I didn’t expect you to drop everything to rescue me.”
Joyce turns back to him and stares into his eyes for a moment, “do you really not know how I feel about you?”
Okay. Had he been asked that question eight months ago— pre the battle at the Starcourt Mall, yeah he would say he was unsure about how she felt. All the bickering and driving each other mad wasn’t exactly a sign that she liked him any more than he wanted. For a while he just figured they were relatively close friends who had known each other since they were kids. That changed when they finally were planning on a date at Enzo’s, at her insistence. Now with her having flown all the way to Russia there wasn’t a doubt about how she felt, but he needed to hear it. Hearing it would seal the deal.
Hopper looks at her lips for a brief moment, the two of them were only inches apart, and god what he would give to kiss her right now.
He looks back at her, “it wouldn’t hurt to hear it.”
Joyce makes a decision without thinking, she looks at him then his lips for a split second and she’s finally the one to cross the blurred line they’d been dancing on for years. She grabs his collar and pulls him up a bit so that their lips meet in a kiss.
It only lasts a few seconds. They both pull apart and stare at one another for a second, both wondering if this was real. But the staring only lasts a few seconds as well before their lips are back together and the floodgates open.
And before she realizes it, they’re on the bed with her on top of him. He was already working at pulling off her top, but Joyce stops.
She pulls back again for another brief moment and feels his hands let go of her.
“Something wrong?” Hopper asks.
“No no. Just that-“ she takes a breath, “I love you Hop,” and when she lets out her breath it’s like a weight lifts off of her. She’d held that in for longer than she even knew.
All he can do in return is laugh, not at her, but in relief, in happiness. Because he’d been waiting a long, long time to hear that. “I love you too, Joyce.”
This time she laughs too.
“Kiss me, James.”
“You got it.”
Hopper brings his lips back to hers in a much more passionate kiss and lets his hands go back to getting her out of her clothes.
There’s a moment, okay a couple minutes, where they stop again. It’s when Jim is finally riddled of his jumpsuit. Joyce stops him from going any further because she wanted to see him.
Not that she hadn’t seen him naked before or at least nearly naked at his cabin. However, she wanted to see any more bruises or cuts that she hadn’t seen because they were hidden by clothing.
There had obviously been a noticeable difference in his weight, but she didn’t care about that at all. She just hated that it came from what she knew to be the Russians starving him.
Of course, when Joyce pulls away from him and she takes his body in in its entirety, she sees more bruises and cuts she hadn’t before.
“Oh gosh… Hop… what did they do to you?”
Hopper cringes, he doesn’t want to talk about it. Probably ever. “Joyce…” He sighs. And truth be told he was somewhat embarrassed by how he looked, he knew he wasn’t very attractive for the time being.
She lightly runs her hands over his torso, “I’m so sorry they did this to you. God… I should’ve been there.”
He immediately rejects that, “I’m glad you weren’t. You’re a lot stronger than me, but I wouldn’t be able to live with myself at all if you’d been there too.”
Joyce sighs and looks up at him, “are you going to be okay to do this? I didn’t ask how much pain you’re in.”
“I might have a few broken ribs, but it doesn’t hurt too badly. I’m fine,” Hopper insists.
She almost wants to stop hearing that he might have broken ribs.
“You’re sure?”
“I promise, I’m fine.”
Joyce nods, deciding to take him at his word. She then looks back down at his torso and leans down and begins pressing some kisses along it.
Hopper tilts his head back in response and closes his eyes, making himself only focus on her and everything she was doing.
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Jim didn’t remember falling asleep. And when he opened his eyes and took a second to remember where he was and that he wasn’t still in the prison being tortured and worked to the bone by the Russians, he’s surpised that he managed to fall asleep.
He then feels a weight that was laying on half of him and the previous night comes flooding back to him. Joyce and him causing the bed to make an unappealing creaking sound that neither of them noticed while they made love.
Jim looks down and sees her brunette hair strewn across his chest and half her face resting just below his heart. She had one arm across his torso and one leg nestled between both of his. The blanket they shared was only covering half of them.
Thankfully she was light enough that her laying on him didn’t hurt his ribs much. Then again he had a new standard for what hurt.
He still couldn’t believe any of this. It felt like any moment now he’d wake up from this dream.
But it was all very real. The feeling of her lightly breathing against his bare skin told him that it was.
Hopper didn’t want to wake her. He didn’t want to move from this spot ever.
So, he’s gentle as he moves his arm from where it was around her and brings his hand to her back. He very lightly grazes his fingertips up and down along her bare back and just takes in the light sound of her sleeping mixed with the sounds of the outdoors.
It wasn’t very long until he heard a groggy but beginning to come to Joyce ask, “is it morning already?”
“That’s at least what they tell me it means when the sun rises,” He quips.
She groans, but begins to pull herself away from his chest so she can look at him. When she does, Joyce immediately notices a light in his eyes she hadn’t seen in a long time. She doesn’t point it out though, she just keeps it and the feeling it brought her to herself.
“You think Murray and Enzo had a fun time sharing a room?”
“Oh I’m sure Murray drove Enzo just to the very edge of madness.”
She chuckles and pulls herself off of him then starts to make her way off the bed.
“Hey hey hey, where are you going?” Jim asks and starts to reach for her to try and stop her.
Joyce does stop but only temporarily to answer his question, “I thought I’d get dressed so I can go ask Murray what our next move is.”
“No no no.” Jim reaches out further and grabs her hand from the edge of the bed, “come back here,” he insists and gently tugs her hand.
The only reason she wanted to resist was because she knew Murray had to be awake already and was waiting on them to get it together so they could make a move to get out of this country and back to America. But instead, Joyce lets her heart take over because of that damn look on his face as he pulls her back into bed.
“Hop…” she lightly complains even though she wasn’t resisting in the slightest.
“Joyce.” He gives her a smile and watches as she crawls back over to him.
Instead of stopping next to him, Joyce brings one leg over his torso and settles right on top of him. “You know we need to get out of this room and go talk to Murray so we can get back home. You know he’s waiting.”
Hopper just shrugs, “let him wait a little longer. I’ve been waiting eons to have moments like these with you.”
She can’t help but melt from hearing that. She doesn’t waste anymore time before bringing her lips back to his.
Leaving could wait. Besides, a half hour or so was nothing in the grand scheme of things.