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It’s a strange kind of stillness that he finds in the aftermath.
At first, it’s a fearful kind of stillness - as though looking at it wrong, or setting it down too roughly, or looking away for too long would destroy it. The sick feeling somewhere down in between your fractured ribs that this peace you are clinging to with both hands is going to evaporate at one wrong move, and you can do nothing to stop it, or slow it down. It hurts, and it’s miserable, and it’s-
-gone. Gone the second he sees her again, the moment she’s back in his line of sight.
“Are you okay?” is something she says to him at some incongruent point in time and he can only muster up the strength to nod and hold his breath afterwards because this is the most “okay” he’s been in months , and it’s so good he aches.
Her hand is warm in his and she hasn’t let go of it yet, and doesn’t plan to. He doesn’t look away from her, doesn’t stop studying her face and her dark curls of hair and the slope of her back and he doesn’t plan to. (If Murray wants to complain about them being attached at the hip now, he can. Neither of them have the energy to quarrel about it, and neither of them care to.)
When the chaos subsides - the screams, the thundering animalistic call of the demons loose in the icy snowscape, all finally fade - he finds himself unable to find the words he’d wanted to say during the insanity. Instead, he lowers his head reverently against Joyce’s shoulder, tucks his face into the side of her neck, stays silent, if not by choice then by sheer dumbfoundment.
Hopper has never been very good with words. He talks over himself - too fast, too loud. Too many feelings all bottled up, threatening to boil over like a paper mache volcano in a second grader’s science fair project, and there are things he wants to say - needs to say - but it’s like there’s nothing there holding his head above the proverbial sea that is how hopelessly in love with Joyce Byers he is.
Now, they’re in the back of a rumbling van as they careen haphazardly cross-country, all the hounds of hell on their heels. He leans against her and lets the soothing melodies of three distinct arguments in Russian happening in the front seat and the wind pounding on the sides of the vehicle lull him into hesitant complacency - but the feeling of her hand in his, her thumb tracing circles across his bruised knuckles, does more for him than the promise of freedom ever could.
“You’re hurt, Hop,” Joyce mutters, after their silence gets just a little too loud, sitting up onto her knees and moving to rummage around the van. He lets out a whine of discontentment as the warmth of her hand leaves his, inclining his head towards her. It’s not long before she returns, to his relief, first aid kit in hand and a determined knit in her brow - an expression he had seen many times before.
“Just a scratch,” he lies, not very skillfully, and Joyce’s pursed lips deepen into a frown as she glowers at him, and he thinks perhaps he should watch his mouth when she’s wielding gauze tape and scissors.
“Bullshit,” she mumbles, sliding herself over to him on her knees, thighs straddling against his legs to examine his face and suddenly the droning of the van’s engine and the stream of what he can identify to be swear words from the front seats turns into nothing but a distant buzz. She’s been close to him all day, all night - but now it’s quiet, now he notices things.
He notices the traces of snow still gracing her thick eyelashes, notices the slope of her nose down to her lips that he traced over the memory of in his dreams, notices the familiar pull in the corner of her mouth when she was particularly focused on something, and perhaps it's only better that now he’s the thing she’s so focused on.
He’s going to say something stupid. He knows he’s going to say something stupid.
“Here, turn your head.” Her hand comes up against his chin and he willingly sinks into the cup of her palm, letting her guide his head to the side and he sighs as the coolness of the gauze pad meets the irritated red-hot gash. She hums softly, and he can feel her eyes still watching him as her hands worked, as though waiting for something.
After a few moments, her hand falls back down to her lap and there’s a heartbeat of silence - the ride is less bumpy, now, and the voices upfront have quieted, if only a little. His breath turns thick in his throat as he feels her hands slide over to his lap, first settling on his knees and then seeking out his hands, now stiffly at his sides.
Her warm fingers find their way to his fists, and it takes everything in him to relax his grip just enough to allow her to lace their hands together, and he lowers his head and exhales deeply as their palms press together. His knuckles are bloodied and bruised, soothed temporarily by the gentle brush of the pad of her thumb over them.
“Hey.” Her voice is hoarse, breathy. He can barely dare to look up when she leans forward, their foreheads butting together, the tip of her nose gracing his. He’s not sure when this became the norm. This sudden proximity - the way he feels as though reality will shatter if she lets go of his hands, if he opens his eyes. A delicate balance - one he knows the universe is going to upset, one way or another.
“Hey,” he croaks back, a pathetic response, but they both know it’s all that’s really needed. The real comfort lies in the sensation of her fingers tracing the gaunt lines of his filthy hands, holding on gently but firmly - a constant, thudding reminder that this is real .
After a few moments and a few more curses from up front, he feels one of her hands slide out from his and two soft, delicate fingers reaching down to his wrist. He tilts his head to look downwards at the unfamiliar gesture, briefly puzzled. She barely moves, keeps her head pressed against his, and keeps her other hand firm in his. Two fingers on his wrist, steady and searching, pressing into his skin with something bordering on desperation.
“Joyce...?”
It’s like she can taste the worry in his voice and she squeezes his other hand. “Proof of life,” she clarifies shakily, her voice scraping a hoarse whisper.
He breathes out a soft “oh” and leans his head up, this time finding the strength somewhere deep inside his broken body to meet her gaze, and gently removes his wrist out from under her fingers. He brings her wayward hand up to his neck, placing it gently against the patch of scratchy skin just beneath his ear, where he was at least mostly certain she’d find the pulse she was looking for. There’s an odd flash of relief that crosses her face, and he’s sure his heartbeat is probably giving him away, erratic and racing through the roof.
“Still got one?” he jokes, halfheartedly mustering the strength to color his words with a laugh, though his body gives a warning pang as he does.
The way her eyes shine is enough to make him forget the pain entirely, and her thumb caresses the rough stubble of his jaw, nodding, almost as if to herself. “You’ve got one,” she confirms, but her brow dips with worry after a few more seconds. “But... it’s a little bit fast.”
“Huh.” He wants to laugh again, but breathes back the urge as a mercy to his fractured bones. “Dunno why that is.” Maybe she hasn’t noticed, yet, the way their intertwined hands are resting on his leg, the way their mouths are only a few inches apart, the way he’s been studying her face so intently it’s like he’s afraid he’s going to forget it.
She shifts forward, and their knees touch. A bolt of white-hot lightning erupts somewhere deep in a long forgotten part of his body - like she’s trying to give him a heart attack. A bit unfair and counterintuitive, considering the lengths she just went to in order to make sure he didn’t die.
“What, do I have something on my face?”
Joyce wrinkles her nose. “Blood,” she states. “I missed a lot.”
“Guess I’m pretty distracting, huh?”
Her face breaks out into the smile she’s been unsuccessfully hiding - finally, and it raises the temperature in their shitbox of a ride by ten degrees - and she opens her mouth to respond, something along the lines of the nerve of you, Jim Hopper - and she’s closer, somehow, and he holds his breath, her hand still on his face, the other squeezing tighter, inching up his leg -
And then there’s a loud bang from the front and Murray’s distinct voice shouting back to them. “We’re stopping up here! Stop swapping bacteria back there, please!”
There’s a heartbeat of silence, and Joyce sighs in defeat, but doesn’t move. “I’m gonna kill him, Hop.”
He grins. “Not if I get my hands on him first.”
“Hey.” Her fingers trail behind his ear and he shivers, desperately fighting to keep his composure, even though he knows she’s already noticed. “You better not be putting your hands on anyone until we get you properly cleaned up, okay?”
He lets out a soft whine. “C’mon, Joyce . Anyone?”
For a second, she stares at him in absolute wonder, and it occurs to him what he’s just said. For all of five painfully slow seconds, Jim Hopper debates scrambling out the back of the van and burying himself in the snow forever.
“I guess ... I could make some exceptions,” she finally says, her voice impossibly soft.
Her hand has traveled down from his cheek to his neck and then to the collar of his shirt. The van has started to slow down, but the world through Hopper’s eyes speeds up to a million miles an hour, and he’s so fucking tired of this stupid, painful wait , because she’s right here, finally, and they finally have a moment -
They haven’t escaped, not yet, but with the prison behind them it feels like they have - that half year of torture miles behind them buried in the snow. There are things he wants to say, still. But there are more things that he can’t find the words for.
Joyce rolls her eyes, then, pressing her forehead back up against his. “Missed you,” she whispers, and god damn it all, god damn the miserable months he’d spent dreaming of seeing her again, god damn the regrets he’d had about leaving her all those years ago.
Joyce Byers kisses him in the back of that stupid fucking van and the universe implodes.