Work Text:
Our lives are made
In these small hours
These little wonders
These twists and turns of fate
The buck moon hangs heavy overhead in a cloudless July night sky, casting lines of silver across the bedroom. The air is cool, the soft whir of a fan on the bedside table keeping the Indiana humidity at bay for a sleeping wife, and a husband very much awake.
Jim Hopper lays silent beside his beloved wife, watching her sleep with the littlest of moonbeams catching the edge of her chocolate curls, dusting a haze of moonlight across her delicate face. She’s fast asleep, lying on her side away from her husband because she knows he is there, always. Nothing to disturb her, except perhaps the life that grows within her.
A little girl by the ultrasounds that they’ve hung like prized artwork on the refrigerator, held aloft with a magnet in the shape of a pink pacifier. It hangs alongside honor roll certificates and beautiful drawings from their other bundles of joy, now burgeoning young adults in high school.
Jim is careful in his movements, crawling closer to his Joyce, arm draping over her to press a flat palm against the swell of her belly. He knows Joyce would whine at him if he managed to wake her, so he does his best not to. A bearded kiss is pressed to her bare shoulder, tank top strap having slid down her arm.
It's in these small hours of the morning that Jim Hopper is able to take stock of the things he’s so lucky to have these days. How fate twisted his life in more than one way, and how lucky he is to be where he is today. How he’s lucky to have a second chance.
Eleven, his girl, his little buddy. His kiddo. The one that helped him heal from old, tattered wounds that will forever, in his mind, be of his own making. The little girl that forced him to be better, do better. Stubborn like a bull and unruly like a wildfire, but tender and soft and comfort-seeking when things get too scary. Hopper became her home, her shelter, her safe place from the Hell that was learning the world when you had never seen outside of white, concrete walls and painful memories.
He’ll never be able to thank her, because he knows she would just smile that smile at him and shake her head. While Jim might think she saved him from falling further down the path of ruin, Eleven just sees him as her Papa, the man she loves and knows will always be there for him. No matter what, he’s told her, no matter where you are. You call me and I’ll be there. I don’t care if you think you’ll get in trouble, I’d rather have you safe and alive.
Will, the one he now thinks of as his boy. Sensitive, kind, tender-hearted. Hopper had no idea what he was walking into the day he fell in love with Joyce, but Will has surprised him day after day. His kindness is limitless, acceptance and inclusion sewn into his bones by his mother’s ability to love without limit, to nurture and cradle and foster love that cannot be dampened even by the worst storms. She fanned that fire in her son, even when the hurricane of pain whipped them raw. Even if Will does not see this in himself, Hopper can.
The resilience, the love of life and love for his friends, taking things slowly and relishing in the little things. He sees it in Will’s artwork, the way he treats others he does not know. And he’s smart, too. Smarter than Hopper could ever imagine being. He never claimed to ever have a hand in that boy’s upbringing, but he knows that Will enjoys hanging out with him, even if Hopper is just working on one of the cars or is patching a hole in the roof. He does his best to impart even tiny nuggets of knowledge to the boy, but Hopper will never see how Will watches him. How he’s glad Hopper is here, someone to make sure his mom is okay. How he finds the police chief’s presence a comfort, familiar and expected.
And Joyce. The one he should never have let get away, angrily smoking in his car during senior prom while she danced away with her ex-husband. The one he snuck smokes in between fifth and sixth period with, who he should have kissed and loved back when they were just young, dumb kids. The one that fought for him, the one he fought for. The amount of shit they’ve been through, and yet they fell together like fated encounters, over and over and over again. Drawn like stars in orbit to one another, and oh was the collision worth it. He’s not so dumb as to believe it was all fate, though.
Hopper chose her; chose her and her sons over and over again, chose to believe her, chose to chase monsters with her. She was a conscious decision, one of the few things in his life that Jim Hopper can say he fought for with every fiber of his being, her and her family, her love, her happiness.
And by some stroke of luck, Joyce picked him back. Chose to lean on him, to fight for him, to weep for him. To mourn him as they put an empty casket in the ground. To track his sorry ass to Russia, of all places, break him out of the gulag and drag him home with her. Call him out on his bullshit, challenge him with a fire that burns brighter than anything Hop had ever witnessed in his life.
He could not say any one of the people he loved fixed him. They were his catalysts, forcing him to go through it all because he loved them all. Because they deserved the best version of Jim Hopper that he could give them.
He smiles to himself against the soft skin of his wife’s shoulder, feeling the soft flutter of a baby’s movement under his hand.
Jim Hopper. Former soldier. Former drunk. Former police chief of Hawkins, Indiana. Former inmate and prisoner of war.
Current friend. Current mentor. Current husband. Current father of four.
All of my regret
Will wash away somehow
But I cannot forget
The way I feel right now
In these small hours
These little wonders
These twists and turns of fate