Work Text:
Jim Hopper is tired of living a life based on secrets and contingencies.
But tonight that finally ends.
The thought settles into him with an unsettling kind of calm as he sits behind the wheel of his truck outside the Byers’ reacquired house, engine idling low and steady. His hands rest heavy on the steering wheel while his pulse keeps time somewhere behind his ribs.
For most of his life, especially the life he has lived since Hawkins revealed itself to be a nesting ground for horrors that do not care about rules or odds or whether a man has already lost more than he can reasonably survive, every decision he has made has been layered with backups and second guesses and silent rehearsals for what he will do when everything inevitably goes wrong.
Tonight is supposed to be different, though. Tonight has to be different.
His leg bounces nervously as he waits for his plan to be set in motion. It’s 6:37, and he can almost perfectly visualize Joyce panicking and running around her house like a nut, because he told her that he wasn’t picking her up until 7. Little does she know, though, that him being early was always the plan.
Like clockwork, Jonathan comes out onto the porch at 6:40 with a quietness and stealth that has Hopper wondering if they should have used that more to their advantage in the past. Jon's shoulders are still pinched a little too tight to himself even now that the worst of the danger is supposedly over, and Hopper frowns, grateful they didn’t subject Jonathan to anything more than what he had experienced. Hopper watches him approach with something like awe lodged uncomfortably in his chest, because this kid went into hell and came back out carrying everyone else with him, and now he is holding something far more terrifying than any monster in his hands.
Jonathan opens the truck door and slides inside, the night air following him in.
“For the record,” Jonathan says, glancing sideways at Hopper with a faint, uncertain smile, “Murray asks way too many questions to have been involved in this.”
Hopper snorts despite himself. “Sounds about right.”
“Nancy almost caught on, too,” Jonathan says.
Hopper shrugs unapologetic and sticks out his hand, desperate to keep the plan moving.
Jonathan huffs and reaches into his sweater pocket, gingerly pulling out a John Coltrane cassette tape holder, its plastic worn smooth and the hinge looking like it has been opened and closed too many times in anxious hands. Hopper feels something deep and dangerous shift inside his chest as it changes possession for the last time, the small weight of it settling into his palm, warm from Jonathan’s body heat and absurdly heavy with everything it represents.
Hopper opens the cassette tape holder and finally gets a good look at the ring inside.
“You ready?” Jonathan teases.
Hopper nods once, suddenly at a loss for words, which he hopes like hell will remedy itself quickly before Joyce gets outside. She’s far too perceptive for him to be acting weird.
Jonathan hesitates, then adds quietly, “She’s going to say yes.”
Hopper’s throat tightens around something that might have been a laugh if it had not hurt so much. “You do not get to guarantee things like that, kid.”
Jonathan’s smile is gentle and stubborn. “Watch me.” He opens the truck door and grins once more at Hopper. “You won’t need it, but good luck tonight, Hop.”
“Thanks, kid. For everything.”
Jonathan nods, closes the door, and heads back inside.
Hopper sits for a moment longer with the ring in his hand. He has faced monsters that peeled reality apart at the seams, but nothing has ever made him this afraid, not even the moments when he was certain he was about to die.
He knows it's because this is not about survival anymore.
This is about choosing to live without an exit plan. This is about looking toward the future, which is something he hasn’t done in a very long time.
The cassette tape holder and ring are tucked safely into his pocket by the time Joyce comes out ten minutes later.
She is dressed in a knee-length black dress with a deep V that nearly has his knees buckling as he gets out of the truck to open her door. Her hair is loose around her shoulders and her face is mostly bare save for a little mascara and some red lipstick, making him burn with a need to kiss it all off. For a moment he just stands there like a man who has accidentally wandered into the wrong life and does not quite trust that it will not disappear if he moves too fast.
Joyce clicks her teeth nervously once she reaches him. “Karen helped me get ready,” she tells him self-consciously. “Is it too much?”
Hopper snaps back to reality and shakes his head vehemently. “No, no, you look… perfect.”
Joyce smiles softly, rising on her tippie-toes to give him a sweet kiss.
Hop has half a mind to tell her to forget Enzo’s and ask instead to go back into her house.
Instead, he musters all his self control and gestures to the truck. “Shall we?”
…
The restaurant glows out into the street when they pull up, light spilling through the windows in warm gold sheets that feels almost defiant in a town that’s still learning how to be whole again. Hopper sits behind the wheel longer than necessary, staring at his reflection in the glass and cataloging every reason this is possibly the stupidest thing he has ever tried to do, which is saying something considering his track record.
“You look like you might bolt,” she says lightly, touching his hand.
“I considered it,” he admits, smiling wryly at her. “Decided that would probably end poorly for me.”
Her laugh is soft and warm and it loosens something in his shoulders that he had not realized was drawn so tight. Joyce looks at him expectantly then, and Hopper realizes that there is no turning back. He takes a deep steadying breath.
He turns off the truck and gets out, patting his pocket nervously, just to make sure the ring hadn’t vaporized during the drive over. He opens Joyce’s door and helps her out, murmuring once again that she looks beautiful.
The air probably feels warm and inviting to everyone else inside the restaurant, but to Jim, it feels stifling. He can feel his pulse quickening as they’re greeted by the maitre d’ and escorted to their table.
Joyce orders a bottle of their chianti and some breadsticks, joking that she heard from a trusted source that they come highly recommended. The waiter is unamused, but it makes Hopper smile.
Dinner unfolds then in a way that feels almost surreal in its normalcy. They eat pasta and drink wine, all while having the most easy conversation—one that does not revolve around survival tactics or government secrets or the possibility of imminent death. They talk about the boys (Will is about to be a senior and Jonathan is about to leave with Nancy for NYU finally), then about Hawkins (new businesses are opening up and there hasn’t been a single serious crime in nearly a year). The longer the conversation stretches on, the more Hopper feels himself slipping into something gentler than fear, something almost resembling peace, and it frightens him for how badly he wants to believe in it.
He almost interrupts her tangent about needing to take up gardening to fill her time because he thinks it might be the moment, but then Etta James’s “At Last” begins to drift from the small sound system near the bar. The music is rich and aching and impossibly tender and Hopper stands before he even realizes what he’s doing.
Joyce lifts an eyebrow.
“Dance with me, Detective Byers?”
His heart stutters painfully against his ribs as Joyce blushes and takes his hand.
The floor is small and the world outside feels very far away as he draws her close, one hand settling at her waist, the other warm and steady in hers, and as they begin to sway together Hopper is hit with the unbearable clarity of how long he has wanted this without ever quite naming it. Joyce leans into him and he nearly melts on the spot.
At last, his lonely days are over.
The lyrics of the song hit far too close to home, putting words to his greatest fears. But those fears are long gone now. He has Joyce, he has a family, he has a home. Everything is… right.
By the time the song ends Hopper is shaking.
His mind races ahead as fear tries its best to drag him backward into contingency and retreat, and the walk back to the table feels like navigating a narrow bridge between the life he has already survived and the one he might still be allowed to choose.
The air has shifted around them, humming with charged anticipation. The ring feels heavier than ever in his pocket, and he knows now with an incredible amount of certainty that this is the moment.
Joyce turns toward him just as they reach the table. The cataclysm of emotions erupting through him must be etched all across his face because Joyce frowns at him. “Jim?”
He exhales slowly and lets the truth he has been circling for years finally step out into the open.
“I love you,” he says simply.
Her breath catches and then she smiles. “I love you, too, Hop.”
He pulls the cassette holder from his jacket then with hands that are steadier than he ever expected to be in this moment. The case opens with a soft click, and Jim watches the reflection of the ring catch in her widened eyes as her hand flies to her mouth.
His voice drops low, so that the moment can be as private between them as it can be in a public restaurant.
“I have lived my entire life assuming that if I planned enough, if I built enough escape routes into every version of my future, I could outmaneuver the inevitable losses,” he says, the words finally pouring out of him in a rush that does not allow him time to second-guess them. “I make the plan, then I make the backup, then I make the version of myself that survives when both of those fail, because that is how I learned to stay standing. I started living like that when I lost Sara, when I lost all hope. I started planning a life as a miserable old asshole that made everyone around him equally miserable.”
He pauses and clears his throat of the emotion threatening to disrupt his speech. “And then six years ago, I found you sitting in my office, and suddenly all my plans no longer made any sense. I felt like an 18 year old kid again, wishing I’d defied my dad and stayed with you at Melvald’s that night.”
Joyce blushes, the reverie of that night in ‘59 threatening to pull her away from him.
Hopper barrels through the memory, “Then, it made me feel out of control, like everything in our lives had always been planned for us, and we’ve been helpless to stop it.”
Joyce’s smile tinges with a little sadness, but she lets Hopper continue.
“But you know what? Fuck that. We survived all this shit. We survived. We make our own goddamned plans. And I’m tired of making plans that make me miserable and don’t involve you.”
Hopper drops to one knee, the floor solid beneath him and this gaze steady on hers.
“Joyce Byers,” he says, voice breaking as he looks deeply into the eyes of the woman who has reshaped his life one impossible miracle at a time, “will you marry me?”
For a heartbeat the world holds its breath.
Then tears are spilling from Joyce’s eyes. She’s laughing then and dropping to her knees with him, her hands framing his face as she presses her forehead to his with a kind of fierce tenderness that nearly unravels him on the spot.
“Well it only took you 30 years,” she jokes through teary kisses. “Yes, Hop. Yes, yes, yes..”
Hopper, getting misty-eyed himself, slides the ring onto her finger, and for the first time in his life he does not feel the immediate urge to imagine how it could all fall apart.
He doesn’t make a failsafe plan. Not this time.
This time, he looks forward to future days.