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1963.
Hopper rises to conscious slowly.
It takes him a moment to realize why he’s awake; and then he realizes Joyce’s body is curled around his, front pressed to his back, with her face buried in the back of his neck. She’s warm and soft and small against him, and he almost relaxes.
But then he shifts, the new bruise on his face pressing against the fabric, and he hisses softly.
The noise prompts Joyce to wake, and she lifts herself up, eyes full of sleep.
“’S wrong?” she asks, voice quiet; neither want to wake his parents, considering she wasn’t supposed to be sleeping in his bed in the first place. And after the backhand from his father the day before, neither of them wanted to anger either of them.
“Just my cheek. ‘m fine, Joyce,” he tries to assure her, but Joyce sees right through him, and rubs the back of her hand over her eyes.
“Let me see,” she says quietly, and touches his chin with light fingertips. Finally, he lets her tilt his face, and her soft gasp at the sight of the black and blue mark on his cheek makes him want to wince. “Oh, Hop…”
Joyce’s fingertips are so gentle against his skin; like butterfly wings, whispers of a touch as she catalogues the damage.
“I’m gonna be fine, Joyce. It’s just a bruise,” he reminds her, and Joyce’s dark eyes are full of sadness, her pale skin glowing in the last vestiges of moonlight spilling in through the window.
“It’s not just a bruise,” she murmurs, and lays her knuckles gently against his good cheek. “I wish I could make this better for you.”
Hopper’s heart thumps loudly in his chest, and he stares at his best friend, warmth pooling in his cheeks.
“Let’s run away together,” she whispers, settling her chin on his shoulder, and Hopper cracks a half-grin.
“Oh yeah?” he asks, and Joyce nods. “Where would we go?”
“Florida,” she says, nose crinkling. “It’s warm and sunny.”
“Nah- too many hurricanes,” he replies, and Joyce finally nods, relenting. “What about…New York?”
Joyce’s eyes widen, and then she grins.
“Yeah. New York,” she says, rolling the words around in her mouth. “We could get a cute little house by the water.”
Hopper nods, watching her, and feels all the love he has for her pool in his stomach. The life she paints for them is perfect- a little house, a couple of kids, away from everyone who’s ever known them. They lay in bed until the sun comes up, and Joyce reluctantly slips out his window, heading for home to change for school.
For as awful as the previous day had been, the morning sits sweet on his tongue, and he’s barely conscious of the bruise on his cheek as the day passes. He bids goodbye to Joyce, who was working that afternoon, and drives back home.
Waiting for him is a government letter, and the dreams of the morning slip away like sand through his fingertips.
1972.
Hopper wakes up to a toddler foot in his face.
He shifts Sara, moving her foot out of his face carefully without waking her. After a pair of puppy dog eyes, she’d ended up in bed with him the night before. Diane was away at a conference for the weekend, so it was just a dad and daughter weekend. They’d gone to the park, they’d ordered pizza, and they’d watched Sleeping Beauty until Sara fell asleep in his arms.
He looks over at the clock- it’s barely six am, too early to get Sara up, so he simply dozes in the warm sheets until Sara shifts, coming to curl up under his chin.
“Daddy,” she murmurs, half-asleep, and the place just south of Hopper’s ribcage thrums the way it always did at the reminder that Sara was his flesh and blood. His daughter, perfect and blonde and giggly and silly, all of fourteen months old.
“Mornin’ sweetheart,” he says, kissing the top of her head as she snuggled into him. “What do you think? Pancakes or waffles?”
“’ffles,” Sara replies, pushing herself up so she can sprawl on Hopper’s chest, all arms and legs. “Park today, Daddy?”
Hopper chuckles, and pushes some blonde hair out of his daughter’s face, kissing her forehead.
“You got it, kiddo.”
It’s unseasonably warm for March, but Hopper still bundles Sara up in her thick winter coat and boots. They walk to the local park, Sara’s little hand in his. She tugs him immediately for the swings, and Hopper grins, scooping her up and depositing her in the seat. Hopper feels concern well in him at the way Sara coughs a few times, almost unable to catch her breath, and vows to remind himself to schedule a doctor’s appointment for her on Monday.
He was sure it was just a cold.
1977.
Hawkins is a bleak as he remembers, and the sun that shines through the open blinds of his trailer window shocks Hopper awake.
He’d fallen asleep in a drunken stupor once again, forgetting to close the blinds. It was a nearly daily occurrence; he should really learn to simply leave them closed at this point.
Glancing at the clock blearily, he groans.
“Flo’s gonna kill me,” he grumbles, and shoves himself to standing. It was nearly ten, and his shift had started two hours ago, at eight.
Not even forty and he was chief of the small town’s police department, despite an overreliance on booze and drugs to keep himself alive. Diane had left him within a year of losing Sara, and he didn’t blame her. Soon enough, he couldn’t keep up with the demands of a NYC detective, and when his father had passed, it had been a simple enough decision to return to the town he couldn’t escape fast enough after the war.
He forces himself into the shower, finding a half-empty beer inside that he finishes while under the spray, scrubbing under his arms with the bar of soap in the dish.
Hopper thinks back to the previous day; he’d run into Joyce- now Byers- in the grocery store. She had two kids now; two boys, probably the one good thing that dipshit Lonnie Byers had ever done for her. It had felt like being punched in the gut; seeing someone he’d once planned a future with look at him like he was a stranger, standing there in the middle of Melvald’s with one kid in the cart, the other holding her hand.
By the time he finally dresses himself in a semi-clean uniform and drinks another beer, it’s after ten thirty.
“You’re late,” Flo crackles across the radio in the truck when he calls in, and he tries not to register the disappointment in her voice.
He’d run out of people he hadn’t disappointed.
1986.
The California hotel room is small, the bed a little dingy- and all Hopper can think about upon waking is that Joyce Byers still smells like lemon soap and clean skin.
He’s wrapped around her, face buried in the back of her neck, an arm around her waist and fingers intertwined. They’ve gone through literal hell and back, and somehow, she’s real, here in his arms, after months of believing he’d never see her again.
Joyce shifts in his arms, humming slightly as she rises to consciousness, snuggling back against him.
“Morning,” she murmurs, voice thick with sleep, and Hopper falls even more in love with her.
“Mornin’,” he returns, and presses a soft kiss to the round of her shoulder through the thick henley she wore. “Sleep okay?”
“I should be asking you that,” she answers, shifting in his arms until they’re face to face. Joyce’s fingers gently trace his face, and her lips quirk upwards into a small smile. “I can’t believe you’re real.”
Because he can, Hopper pulls her in for a kiss, and Joyce melts into him, kissing him back as one arm loops around his neck.
Joyce smiles into his mouth, grinning, and then pulls back.
“We see our kids today,” she murmurs, and he nods, stomach warm with affection- for her, for his daughter, for the boys that in another life are his.
“Yeah, baby. We do,” he says, lifting a hand to stroke her hair out of her face. “I’ve missed that kid so god damn much.”
“And she missed you, Hop. She missed her dad,” Joyce tells him, cupping his cheek. “But you’re back now. That’s all that matters.”
He softens, leaning into her touch.
“C’mon. Let’s go meet Murray for breakfast before he busts down the door,” he says, and the giggle he pulls from Joyce is like music.
If he could wake up like this every day, he’d be a very happy man.
1992.
Small hands touch his cheek, and Hopper cracks one eye open.
“G’mpa,” Madeline whispers loudly, and Hopper feels Joyce’s small hands touch his back, clearly awake as well. They both listen, but it sounds like Jimmy was still asleep in his crib the next room over, and they both relax a little. “Pancakes.”
“I told you we could have pancakes for breakfast, Mads. It’s currently…four in the morning,” he tells her, craning his neck to look at the clock. “How about…you snuggle with me and Nana for two hours, and then I will make you pancakes? With extra chocolate chips.”
Madeline’s big blue eyes only get wider, and she stands next to Hopper and Joyce’s bed, arms outstretched.
“Up please,” she requests, and Hopper smothers a laugh at her politeness, even at the early hour. He shifts, scooping his granddaughter up and settling her between him and Joyce, who’s watching him with soft, sleepy eyes. Between the gray streaks in her hair and the wrinkles by the corners of her eyes, she’d only gotten more beautiful to him.
“Hey there, bug,” Joyce murmurs softly, letting her granddaughter snuggle into her embrace. “A little more sleep, okay? And today, we’re going to the park.”
“Okay Nana,” the four year old says, snuggling down under the covers- Joyce searches for her husband’s hand in the dark, twining their fingers together, and squeezes.
Six years together, a marriage and two grandchildren later, and she was still his favorite thing to wake up to.