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‘Hop?’
He heard the voice but it didn’t quite break through the rapidly-declining consciousness that he was clinging to.
‘Hopper? Hey, it’s me, Joyce!’
Silence. Then another series of anxious knocks.
‘Are you in there? Talk to me!’
Some vague corner of his mind knew that he had messed up, that the house was a pigsty, that he needed help. He still couldn’t move. The fog of alcohol clouded all his senses, offering a mind-numbing state of stability - no feelings.
It was the best thing he’d felt in weeks.
‘Hop, you’re starting to worry me! Say something if you wanna be left alone, but if not I’m coming in, okay!’
No reply.
Without any further ado Joyce was scrabbling at the front window and yanking it up. She momentarily stopped as she was hit by the unmistakeable smell of sweat, alcohol and cigarette smoke.
‘Oh, goddamn it,’ she muttered.
Not waiting another second she scrambled through the gap, aided by her slight frame, and was taken aback at the horrific sight of pure chaos. Darkness, empty beer cans on the floor, unmade bed... and there he was, sitting up against the wall with his head hunched practically between his knees, hands cradling it.
Joyce had told herself time and again that she would never open her heart up to another person except her two boys. Lonnie had taken care of that a long time ago, destroying a lot of her confidence, and all of her trust. There was after all, a reason why she had never invested in a proper relationship since then, pouring her life into Jonathan and Will and keeping them close to her all their lives as though they were a lifeline that stopped her from falling into loneliness. But when Will had been taken for the first time, and part of her life had been taken from her, the person who had been there for her was this man slumped at her feet.
She didn’t even hesitate, hurrying over to him and kneeling to gently lift his head from his hands and whisper softly.
‘Jim? Please wake up, please just give me some kind of sign...’
Two familiar blue eyes snapped open and Joyce almost leapt back at the intensity of the pain and hurt inside them.
‘Joyce...?’ he slurred, blinking.
Relief swamped her. She would have been frightened of the intensity of it if she’d been thinking clearly, but she was much more focused on making sure he was ok, and taking him home to look after him and watch over him.
‘Yeah Hop, it’s me,’ she whispered.
‘You shouldn’t be here,’ he mumbled half-incoherently. ‘Shouldn’t see this...’
‘Don’t be ridiculous, you clearly need help. Don’t tell me you were just going to pass out and spend the night in this hell-hole while Jane stayed up in the cabin waiting for you to come home!’
Hopper’s eyes widened in panic. ‘Jane-‘
‘She’s fine, I happened to drive by the cabin on my way home and found her alone, tried calling you about fifty times and got no reply, so I took her home and came over to check on you,’ reassured Joyce, a small hint of reproach in her voice.
‘I heard the phone...’ he seemed to be only just realising this.
‘Hey, it’s ok, I understand, just... let’s get you home,’ she sighed, placing one hand under each arm and struggling to pull him up.
‘Where... where are you taking...’ he struggled with words.
‘Home. To my house. You can sleep in my bed, I’ll take the couch. Something tells me you shouldn’t be alone tonight,’ finished Joyce, voice trembling with worry as she wondered what he might have done to himself if she hadn’t arrived.
‘No...the kids...Will, Jane...they shouldn’t see me like this...’
‘Will is staying at the Wheelers for a sleepover, and Jane was asleep when I left. No, don’t worry-‘ she anticipated his reply, ‘-, she’s safe in the secret compartment - you know the one the kids built the day they found out you’d been hiding her all that time? They won’t find her there. Those kids are pretty resourceful.’
During all this talking, Joyce had managed to get one of his arms around her shoulder and was struggling across the room under his weight, heading for the door and managing to unlatch it with one hand.
‘You really should have a key, Hop, you could get anyone breaking in here...’
‘I shouldn’t have hid her.’
Joyce was confused. ‘What?’
‘Shouldn’t have hidden Jane. The kids...Mike...mad at me. They were right,’ slurred the chief.
‘No, don’t think about that now, it’s all ok,’ Joyce rushed to reassure him, trying to pull him away from the brink of that cliff into despair, even as she struggled to pull open the door of her car. When she finally did so, she haphazardly sat him down into the passenger seat and buckled him up, going to shut the door when his hand grabbed her arm and she was yanked back.
‘Hop, what was-‘
‘Don’t leave!’ The hurt was back full force and she reeled at the sight of it.
‘I’m not going anywhere, just the other side of the car so I can get in and drive us home,’ she murmured reassuringly, brushing his damp hair off his forehead without thinking about it. Gently, making sure to hold eye contact, she removed his hand from her arm, which had gone limp, closed the door carefully and went round the car to the driver’s seat, noticing that his eyes were frantic as they remained on her to make sure she was coming back. As soon as she was inside, she shut the door, turned the ignition key and turned into the main road, heading back home as quickly as she could without breaking the speed limit. (She did in fact break the speed limit. More than once. But since the chief of Hawkins police was sitting right next to her, practically unconscious, she didn’t really think she had to worry.)
She noticed that Hopper was being very quiet, and began to slip (as was so often her way) into concern. She took one hand off the steering wheel and placed it comfortingly over his, making him jump at first, but he relaxed a second later and she breathed a sigh of relief.
‘We’re almost there, Jim, and when we get there I can get you into bed and you can sleep right next door to me and Jane,’ she said soothingly. ‘And maybe tomorrow you can explain what it was that got you so upset tonight?’
He didn’t reply, but she took it for a yes, or at least an ‘I’ll think about it’.
The car drew to a halt in front of the Byers house and Joyce stepped out, slamming the car door behind her before remembering that El was asleep. She opened the passenger door more carefully, struggling with Hopper’s weight again before closing the passenger door, and practically dragged him to the doorstep in her haste to get out of the cold. The key slid easily into the lock, and the two of them were finally inside, Joyce leading him to her bed and setting him down there before returning to close the front door. This done, she had to check on Jane of course, and she felt a stab of worry as she hurried to the secret compartment but on pulling open the flap she found the girl safe, sleeping soundly. Satisfied, she returned to Jim who now lay, uncomplaining, on the old master bed that she had once shared with Lonnie. She sighed, and began to unlace his shoes and pull them off so she could slide his legs onto the bed and rest his head on the pillow, his eyes immediately shutting when she did so.
He looked so peaceful and defenceless like this, she caught herself thinking, so much calmer than when she’d found him half an hour ago. If only he would learn to ask for help these things wouldn’t happen, Joyce sighed, pulling the covers over him against the chill of the night. He was just so proud, willing to help others with their problems but absolutely refusing to accept help from them in return. Would probably be gone before she was even awake tomorrow morning, she thought, taking a couple of aspirin and slipping silently out the door, willing to pretend nothing had happened. Well, if that was his way of coping, she couldn’t argue - heaven knows she’d done some crazy things back when she was getting over Lonnie - and with a shrug she got up from the bed to head for either Jonathan or Will’s room to camp there for the night.
But no sooner had she moved than his eyes flashed open, full of panic, and a hand was grabbing hold of her arm.
‘Don’t go!’ he cried.
‘I’ve got to go to one of the kids’ rooms to sleep, Hop, I can’t stay sitting here all night,’ reasoned Joyce, trying to calm him. ‘I’ll be right next door, you won’t be alone, I promise.’
He shook his head, eyes closing again for a moment and then opening again. Her heart broke at the fear that she found there.
‘Please,’ he whispered brokenly.
She didn’t even hesitate before nodding, unable to refuse. ‘Ok,’ she said quietly. Going to the cupboard, she looked around for blankets but only managed to find an old one that she’d knitted for Will when he was younger, and it was far too small to be able to accommodate her. Shrugging, she grabbed that and the pillow from the other side of the bed and was going to set them out on the floor when he grabbed her hand again.
‘No... here,’ he pleaded, gesturing at the space next to him on the bed.
‘Jim...you know that’s not happening,’ she sighed, pausing her struggles with the blanket for a moment to give him a serious look. ‘You wouldn’t remember what had happened in the morning and freak out, then bolt and not talk to me for days, assuming we’d...’ Joyce couldn’t help a blush spreading over her face before she cleared her throat and continued. ‘I’ll be right here on the floor.’
‘No!’ he muttered. ‘Please, Joyce. Don’t leave! I don’t want to be alone.’
The admission was soft and quiet, laced with fear and years of loneliness. It was what broke her.
In just a couple of seconds she had kicked off her shoes, shed her coat and crawled under the covers beside him, already starting to warm up from the cold that infected the rest of the house. He didn’t move, as though sensing that any movement on his part would scare her away like a skittish rabbit, but the sound of his breathing seemed to even out, becoming calmer, deeper. Until she was sure, even from her position facing the opposite wall, that he was soundly and peacefully asleep.
She had lain down as near to the edge of the double as possible, facing away from him and clutching the covers tightly, and now she tried desperately to forget he was there, shutting her eyes and trying to fall asleep. She couldn’t deny that the situation was making her very uncomfortable, fear and anxiety crawling through her about what he would say when he woke tomorrow morning. And she had her own issues with sleeping next to him, especially in this bed, that held so many memories of her awful ex-husband, almost all of them bad.
Joyce would never have openly admitted to herself that she was afraid of commitment. It was true that she had been in very few real relationships throughout the course of her life (only one, to be exact, an honest voice in her head told her), but that didn’t mean she was afraid of them. The timing had just never been right, she told herself - she’d married Lonnie so early, she was practically still in her teens and finishing school, and then there were the years of steadily-worsening arguments and falling rapidly out of love... She’d always been so scared of breaking it off, even when she caught him time and again with some teenager in various parts of Hawkins, even when he was horrible to the kids or hurt Will with his comments about ‘being a real man’ - even when he’d hit her.
When he left, and she couldn’t go on any longer and finally got the divorce papers, the last thing on her mind had been starting up another long-term relationship. Her love life had been limited to a series of one-night stands that never led to anything, which had been how she’d wanted it. She wasn’t scared of relationships, she just didn’t need them in her life anymore: she had Jonathan and Will. They were a million times better than any man.
But now she was lying less than a foot away from just such a living, breathing man - moreover, a man who had listened to her and helped her and saved her son and who she cared about possibly more than a friend, and she was starting to wonder whether maybe there was just a little bit of commitment-phobia in there. Because her over-whelming instinct was to get out from under those covers and run for her life.
-
Unbelievably, the next thing she knew, she was being woken by tendrils of early-morning light pushing their way through the cracks in her blinds, blinking sleep out of her eyes and stretching the stiffness out of her neck. Must have dozed off after all.
A glance around the room confirmed her expectations - duvet crumpled at the foot of the bed, door ajar, the sheet beside her cold to the touch. Sighing, she lay back down and stared up at the ceiling, trying to quell the bubbling frustration and anxiety.
Nothing had happened. They would leave it at that.