Chapter Text
Hopper and Jane moved in with the Byers after the destruction of the Starcourt mall. Hopper figured that if Jane had been seen in the mall, the most crowded place in Hawkins, that she could live closer to her friends. It didn’t hurt that he had been in a relationship with Joyce for quite some time now. The children all knew each other and got along so it seemed that it would work out perfectly fine. Shortly after moving in however, Joyce noticed Jane’s education to be significantly behind what it should be. This is why Dustin found himself on the front porch of the Hopper/Byers residence waiting to be let in.
After the several locks that Hopper installed were all unlocked, Dustin was face to face with the brown haired girl.
“Welcome in.” Jane said with a smile.
“Hey Jane! How’s it going?” Dustin walked through the living room now minus the Christmas lights that once adorned the walls. The letters were washed from the walls but a faint trace of them remains embedded into the wall paper. “You pick out a book for today?”
Dustin had lent Jane a pile of books he deemed “important to Jane’s education” that they have been slowly working through. They started with How to Kill a Mockingbird, cried through Bridge to Terrabithia, and learned poetry through Shel Silverstein. Jane held up a copy of Ender’s Game. “This one!”
Dustin had been dreading this book. He knew it was important to her education (more her pop culture education than school education) but worried that the realization at the end of the book might upset her. That said, if she would handle Bridge to Terrabithia and the heartbreak that follows that story, then she can handle anything. Dustin liked that about Jane.
Dustin liked a lot of things about Jane. He liked sitting in her living room and reading books together. He liked explaining the words she didn’t know. He liked the way she scrunched her nose when she was processing a particularly difficult passage. And he really liked the way she would lean on him as she got tired reading. The way that she looks up at him when in that position, her big brown, doe eyes finding his. They would stay like that for what felt like an eternity until Joyce would come in with apples or sandwiches or any matter of snacks and the two would separate.
After the snacks, they would move on to math and sciences. Dustin loved going through equations and theories with Jane, who in large part listened only because of how passionate Dustin sounded explaining them. She never practiced them on her own like she did when reading her books.
The two knew their tutoring sessions were complete when Jonathan would take Will home from Mike’s house and the Hopper/Byers residence would be filled with chatter and music and familial bickering once more. After a week of tutoring sessions, Joyce finally managed to convince Dustin to stay for dinner instead of rushing home to his empty house and a can of Spaghetti-os while he waited for his mother to come home from her job.
Soon the daily meals with a large family became his new normal. While the Hopper/Byers household wasn’t a particularly loud one, it was more lively than Dustin had ever experienced and he liked that. He loved the Hopper/Byer house, and more specifically, someone in particular within the house itself. Of course, he would never admit it to anyone, let alone himself.
After dinner, Dustin would drive home in his old beat up toyota pickup and think of what he wanted to teach Jane tomorrow.