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The light is dim in their bedroom. Joyce doesn’t know what time it is, but the sun has sunk below the horizon and the stars have begun to appear in the darkening sky. She can’t be bothered to check either; time is the last thing on her mind when she’s laying in Hopper’s arms, covers lazily pulled over their bare figures. She's gone a little limp as he begins to card his hand through her hair. Nothing in the world could make her get up from bed — get up from his hold, she thinks.
The smell of them is still ever present, nearly overwhelming as she presses a kiss to his shoulder, but she can't get enough of it.
Hopper’s mind is in the place between sleep and sex; half awake and cuddly — he's like a big teddy bear. The only reason she knows he’s awake is because his fingers are tracing little circles along her bare back. The way his body is pressed up against her’s, both as vulnerable as the other, might be nearly more intimate than their actual sex.
Their love-making is always deliciously intense, but the afterglow is always sickeningly soft. Joyce doesn’t know which part she loves more.
It starts absently, when she begins to trail gentle kisses up a lengthy scar that lines his side. It's healed over but it’s left a permanent mark, along with the many others he has. She knows she's the only person who’s seen these scars. Hopper rarely goes shirtless anymore; only during the safeness of their bedroom, where she handles him with care.
He's vulnerable and he trusts her in this state. They've built up strong, mutual trust over the years, but especially so in these last few months.
He used to haphazardly pull on his flannel right after moments of closeness, before settling down. She never commented. She never pushed him. She doesn't remember when he became comfortable enough to let her see him like this, but she's forever grateful. She views him like art because she loves every single part of him; scars and all.
“That one was from one of the first times they cut me.”
Joyce’s thoughts come to a full stop, tilting her head back to look up at him with a furrowed brow and squinted eyes. “What?” Joyce asks. It's possible she could’ve misheard him; his tone was quiet and raspy but she's pretty sure she heard what she heard.
“The scar,” Hopper clarifies lowly. He doesn’t hold her gaze for very long, eyes flickering away from her concerned face.
She blinks, and it clicks. Joyce’s hand naturally settles atop the mark as her gaze flickers back to it, letting out a shuddering breath. She buries her face in his side.
He's never really opened up about this stuff before; not in this capacity, at least. He's made a couple light jokes at his own expense (leaving Joyce with a disapproving look) and vaguely mumbled something about it before changing the topic, but other than that, his lips have been pretty much sealed. She's never forced him to talk, silently vowing to let him do it on his own terms; and here it is, happening now.
“Hop…” she murmurs helplessly.
She hears him inhale sharply after a moment. “Sorry,” Hopper gets out, scrubbing a hand over his face. “I dunno what I’m talking about. Sorry.”
Joyce shakes her head instantly. “No, no, no.” Her tone is soft as she leans up to plant a kiss above his pec, hand resting on his chest. “Keep talking,” she encourages gently. She gazes up at him, chin on his shoulder as he re-meets her gaze. “Only if you want to. I’ll listen.”
His mouth opens and closes, hesitating. “You sure?” he asks warily.
She nods. “Yes.”
He mimics her with a vague bob of his head. “How much do you wanna know?”
A soft sigh escapes her lips, head tilting slightly. “I want to know everything you want to tell me,” she tells him.
The last thing Joyce wants to do is scare him off and make him feel unsafe for whatever reason. So, she does what she’s been doing for the last five months; she doesn’t push him. She lets him find his own way.
A beat passes and he nods again. She places a kiss to the corner of his mouth before she rests her head on his shoulder.
Palm moving down his chest, she finds the scar on his side that she’d kissed a moment ago. It’s just below his arm, the skin noticeably rougher as she traces it over with the tenderness of her finger. “You said this one was…?”
“One of the first ones? Yeah.” He pauses briefly as if he’s picking his words. “They would put me in this room,” he starts. “Try and get information out of me ‘n stuff.”
She swallows around the building lump in her throat, hand pausing in its movement. “About the states?” she manages.
“The states, who I was working for…” His words trail off with the shake of his head. “Anything that I was keeping from them. I never told ‘em anything, but…”
She blinks, lips parting as she mulls over his words in her head. The way he talks about it is almost disturbingly casual. He's probably used to the pain of it all, but she isn't. She doesn’t think she’ll ever get used to it completely. She can’t get used to the thought that he was put through so much hurt – all she wants to do is take away this hurt.
Hopper shouldn’t have to be used to it because he never should’ve been put through it in the first place.
When he doesn’t add anything to his explanation, she doesn’t question him further. She’ll let him guide – not push him.
Wordlessly, her hand paths up his figure, ghosting over his skin. She shifts onto her side – his arm naturally wrapping around her torso, her breasts squashed in between them – as she reaches a smaller scar on his left shoulder. She knows where almost all of his scars lay on his body; memorizing their shapes with every time she has the fortune of seeing him like this.
“What about this one?” she wonders quietly, tracing over the mark with the tip of her finger.
Something between a chuckle and a sigh leaves his lips. “This one’s kinda stupid,” he murmurs. “Some inmate stabbed me with a nail. I didn’t understand Russian at that point, so I had no idea what he was yelling about.” He shakes his head with a weak smile. “He had shitty aim. Went for my head and got my shoulder.”
Joyce breathes out a small chuckle because Hopper does the same. Nothing about any of this is humorous, but what is she supposed to do?
Tentatively, she moves her hand down his chest until she hovers over a mark that she’s been looking at ever since she saw the first glimpse of his scarred body. She’s never commented on it – telling herself that he’d come to her to talk about the evidence of pain that he carries with him. Taking in a breath, she rests her palm atop a particular, darker blemish on the right side of his chest.
“This one?” she asks nearly timidly. Her thumb brushes over it as he sighs.
Hopper doesn't speak for one beat, two beats, three beats.
“You don't have to—”
“No, it’s okay,” he assures her, bringing his hand to cover her smaller one. “I'm just…” He shakes his head.
She smiles weakly. “I know,” she murmurs understandingly as she presses a light kiss to his side.
The silence is comfortable as she waits for an answer; her hand never stopping its gentle pattern, his breathing in a slightly off rhythm from her’s.
“It only happened one time,” he starts carefully, tone even. “They burned me.”
Joyce elicits a shuddering breath as she tries not to wince. She can’t say she didn’t suspect it, because she definitely did; the burn isn’t very obvious but it sticks out from the other marks along his body. She’s kissed it before many times, but now she somehow feels like she has a better understanding of it.
“I don’t think I was following protocol one day and they…” He trails off, lips set in a thin line. Most would miss it, but she picks out the subtle shift in his voice, as if it were about to break.
“Oh, honey,” she whispers as her heart threatens to shatter into thousands of pieces.
The duvet shifts as Joyce gently urges him onto his side, facing her, to trap him in a warm embrace, arms wrapping around his figure. Their height makes it a little awkward, but he buries his face in her auburn, frizzy locks as his hand cups the back of her head. She presses soft kisses to his collarbone—kisses to his scars, and she cranes her head up to kiss what she now knows is a healed over stab wound. Her hand runs slowly up and down his back absently as his shoulders shake once in a while.
She just holds him . She wonders if anybody else has ever bothered to hold him before.
After a while, she hears Hopper exhale. “I’m sorry,” he voices. Now, anyone could tell that his tone is fragile–it’s not a secret anymore, and Joyce is more than glad that he trusts her enough to see him like this–completely vulnerable with nothing to shield him.
Joyce shakes her head. “Don’t be sorry. Thank you for telling me.”
“Yeah. It was getting weird not saying anything,” he murmurs. “Just…the last thing I wanted to be was a burden.”
Something near anger begins to bloom in her chest. A burden? Her brow furrows with disapproval. “Stop,” she scolds him, though her voice remains quiet. She shifts and nudges his head to look up at him. “You’re not a burden. I’m glad you told me.”
Hopper doesn’t reply, nor does he meet her gaze. Joyce cups his jaw with a short sigh, forcing him to meet her eyes with his own.
“The only reason I never asked about it was because I didn’t want to pressure you into saying anything you weren’t ready to talk about,” she promises with the tilt of her head. She needs him to understand—needs him to know that he should never have to carry so much pain. “I’ll be happy to listen if you need to talk. Or, there are those numbers that Owens gave us–”
“No,” he says quickly.
“No?”
The hesitancy in his tone and expression is ever present, shaking his head as he backtracks his speech. “I mean…” He pauses as he covers Joyce’s hand with his own, urging it away from his face and bringing it down “I don’t think I could–talk to someone I don’t know about this shit. I just…” Exhaling, fixes his gaze on their hands, thumb brushing over the side of her palm. “Talking about all this makes me feel weird, but talking to you makes me feel… better about it, I guess.” The way he speaks reflects his words; he’s beginning to mumble as he trails off. “I just don’t want you to feel–”
Instantly, she leans up to slot their lips together with a quiet, frustrated noise. His words dissipate into a low hum as he relents into the kiss. When she pulls back, he doesn’t say anything more–mission success.
“I want you to talk to me, Hop,” she says earnestly, “And not gonna argue with you on this. I just want you to be okay.”
After what felt like ages of him dodging her stern gaze, his deep eyes pour into hers as he nods weakly.
“Okay?”
“Okay.”
She reaches up to card her fingers through his short hair, shaking her head vaguely as he leans into her gentle touch. “I love you,” she sighs, shuffling up closer to brush her nose against his own.
“I love you, too,” he returns, nuzzling into her cheek before bringing their lips together again.
When Joyce wakes up the next morning, she finds her figure pressed up against Hopper’s, holding him from behind; arm thrown over his torso and cheek pressed against his back. She groans softly as she stirs, craning her head slightly to catch a glimpse of the clock.
5:21 AM
Before she can settle back down, Hopper stirs with a sleepy snort.
“‘S early,” she mumbles, resting her head back on the pillow. “Go back to sleep.”
He hums noncommittally and she begins to wonder if he even is awake at all, but then he clasps his hand atop Joyce’s that rests on his abdomen.
Before she shuts her eyes again, her gaze lingers on the healed-over scars that line his back. She kisses one of the more lengthy ones before resting her forehead against it.
She loves every part of him; scars and all.