Chapter Text
Joyce tossed in her bed, plagued by her worries. Her son, her youngest, was doing a genealogy project in his science test, one of the ones where they take cheek swabs and send them in to be tested. Joyce had gotten out of this once; her older son having been out sick the week they had done this project a few years ago. But Will was too excited about it to be persuaded not to participate.
In the early years of their relationship, before they got married, Joyce and Lonnie had fooled around a lot and Joyce might’ve ended up pregnant. But they weren’t financially stable and Lonnie wasn’t ready to get married and have kids, so Joyce put the baby up for adoption. Well, babies. It was a set of twins. But then a year later, Joyce got pregnant again and Lonnie was ready, so they kept the baby this time. A little boy, her known oldest, Jonathan. They waited a few more years to have Will. And unknown to anyone but Joyce and Lonnie, Will was a twin too. His sister had unfortunately passed at birth, though only Joyce thought this. She didn’t actually pass; Lonnie owed money to a man known as Dr. Martin Brenner and used his own child to pay off that debt, but that was a secret that only he knew.
So Joyce was scared; scared that this project would bring up things that she didn’t want to be uncovered. Neither of the kids knew about any of this nor did Hopper. And with Hopper and El living with them, she really didn’t want any major family revelations.
“Joyce, you good?” Hopper muttered after she bumped into him.
“I’m fine,” She said, worry breaking out in her voice.
Hopper rolled over, looked her in the eyes, and spoke, “You can tell me what you’re worried about. I’ll listen.”
“I don’t want to make things weird,” Joyce confessed.
“Just tell me, I won’t judge,” Hopper said, pulling her into a hug.
“I’m sorry,” Joyce said and explained everything to him.
“Joyce, I still love you, and I don’t care enough about any of this to stop loving you. If anything, I love you more because of it.”
“I know, I’m worried about Will and the project,” Joyce said.
“We’ll cross that bridge when it comes but for now, let’s get some sleep,” Hopper wrapped his arms around her waist, put his head on her shoulder, and closed his eyes. Joyce fell asleep not five minutes later, Hopper’s presence calming her.
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“Mom! We got the results from our project!” Will came running into the house, envelope in hand. El followed behind with a huge smile on her face.
“That’s good, can I take a look?” Joyce asked.
“Yeah, we were told to give them to our parents first. Cause of privacy and stuff,” Will explained, handing the envelope over.
“Okay, that’s good. I do want to have a talk with you guys, a family meeting, before we open it, okay?” Joyce told the two kids.
“Sure, can we do it soon? I wanna see the results!” Will bounced around the room with an excitement she hadn’t seen in years.
“Sure kiddo,” she said, placing the envelope on the table.
“Did you know that when Steve did this project he got to find out all these cool things about his family and stuff? He’s adopted, so he didn’t know any of his family and so he got to learn all of his grandparents’ names. That was the closest relatives that popped up though. Also actually Steve might be related to us. One of the grandparents that he found out about had the last name Byers. He could be a cousin!” Will rambled, him and Joyce moving into the living room while El walked away from the conversation to go find Hopper and give him the envelope she had gotten.
“Well, that’s cool. I bet he’ll show up on your paper and we’ll get to see for sure,” Joyce said, smiling at her son. The front door flew open and Jonathan came in, followed by another person. The pair walked into the room and Joyce realized that Steve was with Jonathan. And Steve wasn’t in the best of shape.
“Steve, what happened!” Joyce jumped up from her seat and walked over to examine him.
“My parents. They finally kicked me out. Guess I was too much of a failure and nobody for them to keep me around any longer. The jokes on them though, I was already planning on leaving today. I emptied my bank account and took my stuff from the safe in the house,” Steve started explaining before Jonathan cut him off.
“I was already on my way to pick him and his stuff up so after his dad beat him up, we could make a quick getaway.” Jonathan finished.
“Is it okay if I crash here for a day or two? I might have a place lined up unless Howard blacklists me from everything in the town,” Steve asked.
“Steve, you can stay here as long as you want. Have Jonathan take you to the bathroom to get cleaned up and we’ll start moving your necessities into Jon’s bedroom, you’ll have to share.” Joyce explained, giving Steve a big hug.
“Thanks, Joyce, I promise I won’t be trouble.” Steve said before joining Jonathan in the bathroom.
Joyce walked out to the driveway with Will following her, Hopper and El had already been out in the garage when the boys pulled in. They had gotten the story already.
“Mom?” Will asked, unloading boxes.
“Yes, Will?” Joyce replied.
“Can we still have our family meeting and open the envelopes tonight?” Will asked.
“Yes, we can. I’m fine with Steve being at the family meeting, he’s basically family anyway. And he’s not staying for just a few days, I’ll make sure that he is 100% lined up to live on his own before he leaves our house.” Joyce explained, knowing that Will wouldn’t want to stray from the promise given to open the envelope.
“Okay, I’m fine with Steve staying with us too. Who knows, he could actually be family,” Will noted, setting yet another box down as Joyce and El sorted through them to find the things that Steve needed.
“That’s true, I could be actual family,” Steve said, joining the conversation as he and Jonathan walked into the garage, a few bandages on Steve’s face and new clothes, Jonathan’s clothes, on.
“Well now that everyone’s in here, should we just start the family meeting?” Joyce said.
“Family meeting?” Jonathan asked, confused.
“Yeah, I told Will we had to have a family meeting before he opened his genealogy project envelope. There are some things that I have kept a secret for many years, and I need to tell you about them. So back when Lonnie and I were dating, I got pregnant. And before you say, well yeah you had to be pregnant to have Jon, this was around a year before I got pregnant with Jon. Because of our financial situation, Lonnie and I decided to keep this a secret and then just give the baby up for adoption. So in 1966, I gave birth to twins. I never told Lonnie this but I gave them names. Patrick and Katharine. I didn’t put it on the birth certificate so it’s not official, but that’s what I decided to name them…” Joyce explained, getting cut off.
“So you’re saying that we have two older siblings? A brother and a sister?” Jonathan questioned.
“Yeah. I haven’t searched them out, I didn’t want to ruin the life they have with their parents. But that’s not everything. Will, sweetheart, you’re a twin too. But she died. You both were so tiny and you barely made it,” Joyce turned to face her youngest son, a tear streaming down both their cheeks, “Her name was Eleonore.”
“So, what you’re saying is that when we open Will’s envelope, we could find out where and who those two older siblings are?” Jonathan asked, not taking this revelation very well. He was the one that Joyce was worried about, he tended to keep his family life private and probably wasn’t too thrilled about El, Hopper, and Steve finding out about this at the same time that he did.
“That is what I’m saying. Do you wanna go grab it? It’s on the table in the kitchen.” Joyce looked at her son, trying to give him a little space. Jonathan took this opportunity and left the room, taking a while to go get the envelope. During the time that he was gone, Will and El sat down next to each other, El comforting Will in his weird state of emotion. Joyce and Hopper had started to talk to Steve about what their plan was for him and apologized for pushing him into the reveal like this.
“I have it,” Jonathan opened the door and came back into the garage.
“Will would you like to do the honors?” Hopper asked, handing him the envelope as the young boy shook his head.
“Here we go,” Will said, basically ripping it open and unfolding the paper inside. Everyone gathered around, looking at the family tree as outlined on the paper.
“Steve! You are on here,” Will exclaimed, turning to look at him.
“Well that’s cool, are we cousins?” Steve asked, getting closer.
“Lemme see, you’re here and it says that your parents are… wait, Mom, is that what I think it is?” Will said, looking at Joyce and pointing to a line on the page.
“Steve, sweetheart…” Joyce started.
“What is it?” Steve said, growing a little worried.
“We might have found your birth parents.”
“And they are?” Steve couldn’t handle all the stress and anticipation.
Joyce turned around to look him in the eyes and said, “I’m your mom.”