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Joyce spends her first month in Montauk at a leisurely, wandering pace as she settles into town. Having moved for the job opportunity (among other things), Hopper started his role as Chief within the first week, and it's kept him busy. For a small while, she misses him during the days, but that's only before realizing just how much she enjoys her exploration of town and her morning beach walks with nothing but her cup of coffee in her favorite mug, the sea breeze in her hair, and the waves lapping at her feet.
Employment finds her eventually, though.
Like the rest of Montauk, the high school is small but full of spirit, not unlike Hawkins High. The school year has only just begun, and everybody's seeming to be finding their place and their footing; Joyce included, only part time.
Teaching was never something she'd particularly ever strived to do, but she finds herself settling into the role of a drama instructor with surprising smoothness.
(One of the more interesting parts is hearing people call her by Mrs. Hopper with the utmost natural casualness. People might've been correcting themselves back in Hawkins—"Mrs. Byers—Oh, Mrs. Hopper, sorry—"—but here, Hopper is the only thing students know to call her by. Starting fresh has never sounded so good to her.)
"The missus," Hop drawls as she climbs into his truck—Montauk Chief of Police in slick black lettering on the side, the inside still smelling like fresh, new, clean leather.
Joyce's eyes crinkle in a warm smile. "Hi," she says, and leans over the middle to kiss his stubbly cheek, nudging his sunglasses. "Thanks for pickin' me up today."
"Mmhm." He shifts the Blazer into gear. "I dunno how often I'm gonna get away with it, though."
She frowns and shuts the door, reaching for the seatbelt. "How come?"
"I'm still the new guy. Can't be chauffeuring my wife around everyday on duty."
"You asked if you could pick me up this morning?"
"Whatever. How'd it go?"
She shakes her head, ignoring him as he peels out of Montauk High's parking lot, but she can't help but smile quietly. "Good, actually," she murmurs. "Mostly a lot of icebreakers, but good."
Hopper nods in understanding. "No kids giving you trouble?"
"Not yet. We'll see, though." A tired sigh slips slowly from her throat, lolling her head back against the headrest. "I'm excited to be directing again. I forgot how much I loved doing it." Joyce looks over at her husband, and smiles slowly. "You never entertained my plays in school even if I payed you."
"Easy. I just wasn't a theater nerd like you."
Her brow furrows, barely pouting, but then he reaches across the seat to take her hand from her lap, bringing the back of her palm up against his lips. "I'm getting first row seats to whatever show you put on now, though."
She watches him press a kiss to the back of her hand, the prickly hairs of his mustache against her skin making her nose wrinkle as he does it again.
Typically, theater has a very particular crowd of people that tag along with the craft, especially in high school. Joyce isn't all that surprised to find that the stereotype applies to Montauk, too.
The first week had mostly been her trying to get a feel for this specific group of kids, learning names while trying to figure out whether a cast like this could hold together a production like too-ambitious ideas already brewing in her head. She can't help it. It's been so long since she's been in the theater scene, let alone directed anything, and so much has come out over the past years; the urge to dive head-first into one of her guilty pleasure favorites is tempting, too. But she holds off for a couple days before making any big choices, and Guys and Dolls is what she lands on, despite herself.
Clamoring, excited students are already clustering around her hand written flier she'd stuck on the lobby's bulletin in between class periods. By then, she's already beginning to question whether or not they have the cast for a show like this. The school's budget is another problem she doesn't even want to start thinking about yet.
"Find a seat, please! There's a lot of you, and there's not a lot of time here!"
The black box is, unsurprisingly, small, just like the rest of the department, but the fall musical is a popular extra curricular, it seems. Joyce doesn't know what she'd been expecting, but fifty-something chatty kids wind up piling into the auditions room once the school day lets out. She'd be lying if she said she wasn't slightly overwhelmed already.
She clears her throat and comes to stand in front of her makeshift desk as everybody begins quieting down and finding seats around the room, trying for a smile.
"Thank you everyone for coming to audition!" she begins, the clap of her hands echoing off the walls. "I'm Mrs. Hopper, for those who haven't met me yet. I'm new, so I might need some of you to help me figure out how things work around here… and full disclosure, Ms. Darcy is very much still your go-to if you have any questions regarding singing. I can warm you up with my minimal piano skills and that's about it. Still, very excited to be getting to know you all over the next couple months!"
Biting her smile, she reaches over for her clipboard at her desk, hugging it to her chest as quiet chatter starts in the beat she hadn't been talking. She briefly scans down her list, tutting herself. "Wait, stick with me for, like, five more seconds, guys. We're gonna rip off the band-aid and start with Ms. Adelaide, so if you'd like to audition for her—"
The continuous breach of chatter only strengthens at the character's name, and Joyce can't help but smile as she speaks, watching the excitement begin to build in the room from the ladies.
"—then stay in the theater! Otherwise, hang tight in the lobby until I send someone up for another role!"
A small drove of students stand to leave the theater, some passing by with smiles when she looks up after she sits down at her desk.
"Mrs. Hopper?"
Joyce looks up to the voice, finding a pretty blonde with big glasses gazing down at her, pen in hand. "Hi!"'
The girl smiles. "Hi. Um, is there a cap on how many roles we're able to audition for?"
Her brow creases, thinking. "Has there been a limit in the past?"
"Yeah, sometimes. Mostly for bigger casts, though."
She hums, pursing her lips, stalling. "Maybe a silly question," she warns, "but is this a big cast for you guys?"
Blondie's eyes widen a little as she wordlessly nods in agreement.
"Then lets cap at three. I don't wanna keep us here longer than we need to be." (There's a part of Joyce that's already yearning for a quiet evening in her pajamas.) "Wanna pass the message down to the other Adelaide's?"
Blondie nods politely and turns on her heels to the posse behind her. It's only then that she realizes how many of them there are, and Joyce's smile begins to falter ever so slightly. She lets herself sigh.
It's going to be a long night for her.
It's just after 6:00 by the time Joyce leaves for the night after turning the lights off and locking the front door behind her. The long road between downtown and her neighborhood acts as a clear window to the ocean; she watches the sun paint the sky in oranges in pinks as it dips beneath the horizon.
She pulls in beside Hop's truck in the drive way, not bothering to lock her car, and makes her way up the steps to the door. She hangs up her jacket and tosses her bag on the sofa, frowning at the lack of presence that is her husband before she notices the half-open sliding door.
"Hey. Didn't hear you come in," Hopper says, looking over his shoulder as she pushes it open further. He's at the grill, a pair of tongs in calloused hand with two pieces of meat simmering on the grate.
"I just got in, hi," she sighs, leaning into his half-hearted side hug, letting herself linger for a beat in his arm. A breeze rolls by, making her wind chimes sing, and Joyce shudders against it, wishing she'd kept her coat on. "I severely underestimated how many thespians this school was crawling with."
He frowns at the grumble in her tone as she leans away from him. "Why, what'd they do?"
"No, nothing, I'm just complaining 'cause I'm tired. This smells good."
His lips quirk. "Almost done, gimme five minutes. I got you one of those salads you like from the store, too. It's in the fridge."
A smile creeps onto her lips, and she gives his shoulder a fond squeeze before heading back inside. She grabs a fork from the cutlery drawer and her salad from the refrigerator, then reaches over the back of the couch to dig around in her tote for the notebook before parking herself at dining table, where she picks at her greens and squints down at her haphazard hand writing from only a few hours ago.
Thankfully, they've got the cast for the show, Joyce has learned. Most of everybody is still able to carry a tune, even if their voices didn't particularly make her eyes widen during auditions. That will make her life easier further into the production. As of now, however, it's only making the job of putting together the cast list just that much more difficult; people still need to be cut.
"Ketchup?"
She lifts her gaze as Hopper comes inside sauntering toward the kitchenette, paper plate in hand, and he's grinning because he already knows what her answer will be. The bridge of her nose wrinkles in disgust.
After a moment of burning a hole into her yellow lined sheet, she lets herself look up with a sigh, watching him putter around "How was your day?" she asks after a moment, realizing she hasn't yet.
He shrugs. "Good, slow. I'm still kind of getting a feel for the way things work around the station." Balancing two plates, he crosses over from the kitchenette with a new, small smirk. "Some kid from your school got brought in for shoplifting."
Her brow furrows. "Not one of mine, I hope?"
"Nah. Doesn't seem like the type."
Hopper slides her plate over to her before he slides himself into the bench with a grunt. Joyce presses a chaste kiss to his shoulder as he settles next to her, then pushes her notes to the other side of the table to focus on eating with her husband.
"What're you stressing about?" he asks anyway, giving a nod to the notebook as he cuts into his steak.
"I'm not stressed yet," she says in earnest. "I just need to figure out what parts go to which kid now that I've heard them sing and stuff. I also told them I'd have the cast list out by Friday, which might've been a mistake on my part, but oh well."
He shrugs through a bite of food. "You've got a couple days to collect your bearings, at least."
Teaching only part time is helpful, so he's right; she won't be harassed by her kids tomorrow about a cast list she hasn't finished yet. Wednesday morning, on the other hand, is a problem for a later date.
She just gives a hum before falling quiet for a moment to eat. Lulled ocean waves lap only a little ways away behind them, and by the time they're washing dishes, the stars are beginning to touch the darkening night sky.
"I might need to hire you for helping with set making," Joyce says over her shoulder, running her hands under the tap water as Hop comes up behind her. "Put you to work."
He makes an amused noise into the crown of her head, pressing his face into her hair for a moment. "Just holler when you need me." His touch falls away, and then the fridge opens, probably rooting around for a Dr. Pepper. "Wanna go on a quick walk? 'S gonna get too cold to go pretty soon."
A smile crawls onto her lips, lifting her gaze to the windowsill, to the sandy beach beginning to darken out of view. "Lemme get my jacket."
Joyce’s days off end up being far more productive than she’d initially expected. What she’d assumed would turn into a couple of lazy mornings and half-finished to-do lists instead becomes a surprisingly efficient stretch of time. She manages to throw together something resembling a cast list by Tuesday night, drops the sheet off at Mrs. Darcy's desk for her input by Wednesday morning. By lunchtime that same day, word has somehow already spread, and Joyce is already finding herself fending off a familiar trio of nervous, enthusiastic theater kids at her desk.
"…Can you give even, like, a hint? Or—"
"No," she laughs weakly, leaning back in her chair, "I really can't!"
One of the other three girls pestering her pipes up. "Okay, but do you know when we will at least find out our roles?"
She nods, softening, even though she's already said this multiple times today already. "Friday morning. I'll have the list up on the bulletin, I promise. You're going to have to survive until then, though. You're not getting anything out of me today."
These three in particular have been floating in her orbit especially, these last few days. Sweet underclassmen but persistent as ever, making themselves at home in her classroom during lunch. Joyce finds she doesn't mind it in the slightest.
The girls briefly exchange looks before resigning their attempts after a few more feeble tries at breaking her, retiring to their cafeteria food waiting where they'd left their trays on one of the bigger desks. Joyce goes back to her rehearsal planning, picking at her food while she makes a broad outline of the time she has to get this show on its feet. It's barely a couple minutes in that she begins to hear conversations from those younger voices—unrelated to theater and surprisingly edgy, sounding like something that might've come out of her mouth at that age.
Her brow lifts as she idly realizes how easy it would be to tattle, with her spouse being who he is. But Joyce knows what it's like being that age, wanting to rebel, so she only keeps her eyes on her notes and tunes out the voices on the opposite side of the room until the bell rings.
Even after putting a production schedule together, time is quick to feel like it's slipping from her fingers. She knew the turnaround would be a quick one, but seeing it laid out in front of her eyes and already having had her leads miss rehearsals is just a little dread inducing. There's no point in pretending like there's much time before tech week is upon her. There's so much to do in between now and then.
That's why her rough, crinkled sketch drawn between class periods resembling her ideas of the set doesn't stay on paper for very long. She takes a measuring tape down to the stage after school lets out for the weekend, gets the numbers for reference, and by late Saturday morning, Hopper's already been put to work in cleared out area in their otherwise mess of a garage.
"No clue how I got roped into this already…"
Joyce taps her fingers against the side of her mug, leaning against the door frame. "You love me?" she guesses. Her smile cracks down the center into a frown when he only sighs, turning back to his work. She scoffs. "Oh, please. You've been out here for, like, thirty minutes."
"I know that, I'm teasing." He lifts to his feet with a stifled groan and crosses over to her, gaze pinched and squinted down at the lined sheet in his hand. "You're sure this is to scale?"
She leans up to look at her messy sketch. "It should be. I'm not asking for a replica, Hop. I just need—y'know, some basics." She hesitates, then shakes her head. "I just don't know how much I trust the four production kids to make something that won't collapse mid-show."
Hopper nods slowly at her words, smoothing the grays in his mustache with his fingers. "Yeah. Okay."
"Good." She glances up at him. "Do you remember how shitty the set for my show in school was?"
He pauses, thinking it over. "…There kinda wasn't one, Joyce."
"Exactly," she agrees, "'think we would've come up with something a little more creative if we had some help?"
"Yeah, yeah, okay," he echoes, softer, and she grins, reaching to squeeze his arm before reaching for the roll of yellow measuring tape, handing it to him.
"Good. You need anything?"
He clicks his tongue, setting the sketch on the workbench before moving for the stack of long, smoothed wood flats he'd bought from the hardware store. "We got any coffee left?" he asks, chancing a look over his shoulder.
"I can go put on another pot," she says, turning on her heels once he gives her a nod and a please & thank you that follows her back inside.
The whole time she's gone, she can still hear him at work through the whir of the drill, the sawing of wood. Joyce returns to the garage a short while later with two warm mugs, her own re-filled and one for Hopper in her off hand, little flowers carefully painted on the ceramic. He runs a hand through his crop and reaches when she offers the drink to him, remaining crouched by his work; two flats have been drilled together already.
"Thanks, Boss," he grumbles, teasing.
"Mhm." She gives a nod to his work, taking a sip of her coffee. "Not so bad, huh?"
Hopper doesn't answer her, but there's the faintest hint of a smile tucked beneath his mustache. Joyce lingers for a moment, watching before she takes the hammer off the stool and sets it on the work bench behind him, then drags it closer to the door and perches on it.
His brow cocks, giving an unsure look in her direction as she settles. "Am I getting points taken off my work already?"
"No," she says, frowning, "Why? Can I not be with you?"
He smirks. "You make me nervous."
Joyce just rolls her eyes, takes a long sip of her drink. The smell of sawdust is quick to fill the space, specks catching on the sunlight filtering through the closed garage's windows at the top. It casts on him, too, as he continues to work. Flannel sleeves rolled up to his elbows, arms moving hypnotically with each turn of the hand saw or measuring tape. His eyes are drawn in, focused, the tip of his tongue caught between his lips in concentration until he catches her staring.
She just takes another sip of her coffee, lifting her brow, not bothering to look away.
"What?" Hopper says.
"Nothing," Joyce promises, waving him off dismissively. She can't seem to hold her smirk back, no matter how hard she tries to suppress it. "Don't mind me. Keep it up."
The first time Joyce finds herself spending a weekend in her workplace, they're nearly to tech week, and she's finding herself to be surprisingly calm so far. Production hasn't collapsed on itself yet, and her actors have only had to call line! a couple times in the past week.
"Back looks like she's gonna pop," Hopper grumbles, glancing at the rear view mirror to look back at all of the flats and platforms he'd made and managed to squeeze into the back of his blazer. He turns into the high school's vast, mostly empty parking lot.
"Park up front," she tells him, looking ahead, "so we don't have to haul everything around."
He passes by her usual spot, driving closer to the few other cars near entrance as she searches for her keys to the building in her patterned tote bag.
"We got helpers?" He nods to the other cars as he parks.
"My techies, probably. Hopefully."
When she looks up, he's nodding along, but his brow is furrowed.
"Lighting people," she explains, sighing. "C'mon."
They both climb out of the blazer and round to the back, where he pops open the over-crowded trunk for her. She reaches inside to take two of the smaller platforms, bracing for a heaviness in her arms, but is instead met with surprising lightness.
"Lookit that."
Joyce follows his line of sight over to a steel blue pick-up truck parked a couple spots away. He waggles his brow. She only frowns, adjusting the grip on her items.
"We need one. Would make delivering your set a whole lot easier, huh?"
She scoffs. "You're funny. Come grab something, then we can make another trip back out here for more stuff."
Hopper does as told, even with a grumble.
Once they're inside and headed down to the theater, she realizes that she's never heard it be so quiet before. The lights are off, nobody's working the front desk, and there's no rowdy teenagers skipping class. The black box, however, has lights on; brighter, unfamiliar ones that heat her face when she steps onto the stage.
"Mrs. Hopper!"
Joyce startles ever so slightly, head jerking up to the echo of her name, and relaxes when she finds a face she sort-of knows, crouched up on the cat-walk.
"Oh, hi!" she says a little weakly, setting her platforms down on the ground. "You're, uh, here for lighting today?"
The kid nods, smiling down at her. She curses herself for not remembering his name; Evan, she thinks? Maybe? "Robbie and Mr. Maitland are, too. They're at each other's necks over the amber."
She hums, craning her neck to see the humble little lighting booth up at the top of the space behind the back row of seats, then notices the muffled conversations coming from inside, squinting through the orange glow. "Well, I'll be up there to add another opinion to the—hey, careful, careful—watch the—"
"I got it," Hopper mutters, already angling a thick pile of flats through the theater's entrance.
She relaxes some, stepping aside for him. "There we go. Sorry."
He grunts, setting down his pile. "'S fine," he says, then, "Why's it so hot in here?"
"Stage lights are toasty," she sighs, nodding to the beams.
As if queued, all four overheads dim to nothing, leaving them both to blink in the temporary darkness before they're back on.
Hopper's lip twitches. "Some real techies you got…"
"You shush," Joyce scolds gently, lowering her voice, reaching to fish around for her keys again. "I'm gonna go give them my two cents up there. Can you go make another trip?"
He takes her keys when she hands them to him, nodding. "Yeah, go do your thing. I'll holler if I need you."
She smiles softly, taking her jacket off as he heads back for the theater's exit, already overheating beneath the lights. She sets it aside with her tote in one of the front row seats, then climbs the stairs up to the booth. White, loud light floods through the door's crack when she opens it, and it's somehow more offensive than the stage ones.
"…Go back a cue? Yeah, see? It's—oh, hi, Mrs. Hopper."
Joyce closes the door behind her, taking in the scene in front of her. "Hi," she says as the techie, Robbie, swivels around in his seat to face her, while another figure continues to fiddle with the light board. Her brow lifts at how big it is. "We're barely into tech and we're fighting?"
The kid groans. "There's no—okay. Do you think we should be drowning the stage in amber?"
She hesitates, coming closer. "I mean, no?"
Robbie gestures to the man. "See?"
"Buddy, we have two different definitions of drowning, then." The man looks up and over his shoulder at her, finally. "I'm not drowning it," he tells to her, lower, and briefly turns back to the view in front of him before his double take, his deep eyes lingering. "Have we met officially?"
Her eyes widen, brow lifting. She extends her hand when Mr. Maitland does the same. "No, I don't think so."
"I'm Arthur," he says kindly. His handshake is surprisingly firm for a man so lean.
"Joyce," she returns. She knows she's seen him around campus in passing, maybe in the staff lounge, but she's never seen him in the tech scene of things. "Do you not teach—?"
"History? Yeah. I've got a knack for the behind the scenes, though, so I like to help out when I can."
She nods, grinning. "Well, thank you, Mr. Maitland. The—"
"Please, call me Arthur—"
"—department can use all the help it can get."
Arthur's smile softens. "Happy to be of service," he says, and she doesn't miss his little wink he throws in after, then turns back to the light board.
There's a beat where she almost laughs, caught off guard, but she's quick to recover and brush it off. "Have you lit Luck be a Lady yet?" she asks, glancing over at Robbie, who perks up at her words, nodding. "Can I see that before we fix whatever—" she gestures out the window to the orange stage "—this is?"
He nods, clicks a few buttons, slides a few nobs, and suddenly, the stage is a deep blue. Pretty, but not exactly what she'd had in mind. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Hopper come in through the side, then up onto the stage to deposit more set pieces.
"Good?" Arthur asks.
She hesitates, squinting. "Warm it up a little, then bring the whole thing down."
Hopper continues to moves around on the stage as the two of them move the sliders around until they meet where she'd asked.
"Wait, keep the big one on. The—y'know."
"The front light?"
"Yes," she grins. "There we go. Can we make it this instead?"
"Roger," Arthur says, briefly glancing back up at her with a glint in his gaze that makes her feel less crazy about the aura he's letting off at her. Is she being flirted with? "You got a real eye for this stuff, huh?"
"Please, I'm rusty, if anything."
"No, really, though. This time last year, everybody was scrambling. But you're pretty collected."
She lets out a nervous laugh, moving for the door. "You clearly don't know me very well! Hey!" Joyce pulls it open, peeping her head out as Hopper looks up, looking around for her voice. "Come downstage for just a second!"
Even from this far away, she can see the confusion written on his face. "Huh?"
She gestures broadly. "Move so you're in the light!"
She shuffles back further into the booth again, hovering between the two at the board and watching as her husband manages to center himself in the middle, right where her actors will be in not too long from now.
"…the blue is still kinda washing him out. Turn up the front light?…"
Hopper continues to stand awkwardly. Joyce bites back a giggle at him while they work the light for another couple beats before it warms up perfectly, and then her patient test subject starts to visibly get antsy.
"Looks good," she tells the Robbie and Arthur. "I'm gonna go see what's happening down there. I'll be back soon."
They both let her go with ease, and she makes her way back down the steps to the stage. She didn't realize what a breath she'd been holding in until she was out.
She wrinkles her nose into a soft smile, stepping onstage. "Thank you for that."
"Sure." He bends to pick up her now crumpled, indistinguishable sketch from a little while ago of the concept set. "I dunno how I'm 'sposed to decode this, now," he admits. "You gotta tell me where you want all this, honey."
Joyce tilts her head at the open space of her stage. "Good thing I've got some ideas."
---
It's just before dinner time that the two of them leave the building for the night, and she gets to watch the sky's warm painting unfold before her eyes. Montauk sunset's are better in the summer, but these one's are still pretty, nonetheless.
"Do you feel better about everything?" Hopper asks, walking to the blazer along side her.
Joyce exhales, nodding surely. "I do. Everything actually went okay today." She looks up at him, letting herself smile as she laces their hands together. "Thank you. For all of this."
He hums, sounding content, and gives her cold, smaller hand a squeeze with his own.
They're at the car, discussing whether take-out or leftovers is the right move for dinner, when Joyce's heart tries to escape her chest at the sound of a sudden car honk. She whips around just in time to see a steel blue pick-up truck and the familiar face that is Mr. Maitland's in the rolled down window.
She gets herself to wave faintly before he drives off and out of the parking lot.
"Who's that?" Hopper asks, starting up the blazer as she gets in the passenger seat and shuts the door behind her.
"Mr. Maitland," she sighs, buckling herself in. "He's a history teacher, but he does lights, too, apparently. He's nice."
"Too nice. He sweet on you?"
She gives a sideways glance at how quick he was to say that. But she can't even bring herself to deny his suspicions when he's right. "Kinda felt like it."
His jaw clenches, gazing out the windshield intently as he drives on. The jealous streak isn't a particularly new development with him, but it's been a long while since she's seen it shine like this.
But Joyce doesn't even bother teasing him this time. "Hop," she drawls, reaching to touch his face.
"So…the history teacher is pretending to be on lights to—what, pick up the director?"
"I don't know if that is what's happening," she says gently, "but I do know that I am very married, so." Tilting her head, she twists her ring on her finger. "You looked so cute standing on the stage today. Maybe I'll cast you as my lead next year..."
That gets a smile out of him. She knew it would.
"I think I'm okay being your stage hand," Hopper murmurs, sounding sheepish.
She relaxes into her seat some more at that, smiling.
Joyce's calm is not long lasting. Opening night is upon her and her troupe before they know it. It's not a comical mess; nobody's screaming, nobody's crying (yet), but there's a new, buzzing undercurrent of pre-show jitters that seem to be infecting the entire cast. Even her most confident lead seems to be dealing with it.
"The theater has officially opened!" Joyce announces over nervous chatter down the hall, past the changing rooms and people still only half-in costume. "No actors allowed in the lobby! Go to the green room to talk! No more wandering!"
She spends the next long few minutes ushering stray high schoolers into the spare classroom and sending a few of the more trust worthy ones to round up their friends, which does seem to help the headcount by the time they're fifteen minutes out from places.
"Okay, everybody listen for a few minutes, then I'll let you go!"
Perching on one of the desks, Joyce claps her hands together and relays that message again until she's mostly surrounded by a group fill of costumed kids in varying degrees of readiness and listening. Some continue to panic, some tell the panicking ones to shut up so they can hear.
"I can speak for us all when I say we're nervous, yeah?" she asks, giving a weak smile when she's met with a chorus of yes's. "Me too. Not even because I'm worried about the show or you guys just…pre-show jitters always get me. So, I want everybody—yes, everybody—to close their eyes and inhale through their nose on my count. One, two, three, four…"
A slightly surprising silence overtakes the space when everybody does it. Joyce lets her own eyes close. "And out through your mouth, two, three—"
The door bursts open, just like her eyes, already. Multiple students start groaning and shushing the kid in the frame, but she just beckons him into the room on instinct before he gets the chance to tell everybody what's got him looking so pale in the face. Then,
"I think the police are here."
There's barely a beat of silence before chaos breaks free. There's no way this is happening right now.
"Tommy, shut up—"
"No, I'm being so serious, man!"
"Oh my god, we're all going to jail!—"
"Nobody's going to jail!" Joyce shouts over the panicked voices, shoving through the gap of bodies to get to the door. She sighs, pushing it open. "Move—hold on. Everybody stay here."
A side concern like this popping up only a couple minutes before places is not something she'd anticipated for tonight. She manages to keep her composure even as her questions heighten, especially when she sees no sign of any police wandering about. She makes a beeline for the theater's entrance, where parents are continuing to file inside, milling around and finding their seats. Thankfully, the cast's freak-out seems to be out of earshot from here.
She squints into the audience, but she doesn't have to search the seats for very long. She finds the reason for her kid's panic in the very front row, looking endearingly big in the too-small chair while he studies the pamphlet in hand, reading glasses sliding down the bridge of his nose.
Why Hopper is still in uniform is beyond her, and she doesn't have time to dwell on it right now.
She just scoffs and turns back on her heels back to the green room.
"Places in ten!" she hollers, marching back in. That anxious buzz is still well and alive in the room.
"Mrs. Hopper? The Chief is—"
"My husband!" Joyce claps her hands together over the collective relief and realization among the room. "Now, go to your places for the top of show!"
After a successful opening night, Joyce continues to hang around the school for a while longer, talking with parents as they file out of the theater and the overhead lights turn back on. She's already collected a flower bouquet from one of her leading ladies by the time she does her rounds and finds Hopper, lingering near the door. He beams when he notices her making her way through to him.
"So good," is all he says, muffled into the top of her hair when she melts into his side hug. "No idea how you did all of this."
She hums, pulling away. "I don't either," she admits, then waves him off. "It's just the kids, mostly, though. They're all so good. I'm proud."
"You should be." He hands her a bouquet of his own, the plastic crinkling in her hold when she takes the pink tulips with awe in her eyes.
Joyce leans up to press a kiss to his stubbled jaw, and then out of the corner of her eye, she notices a couple ensemble members out of costume, talking. Her eyes widen, pressing the flowers to his chest. "You scared the shit out of my kids tonight, by the way! You didn't have time to go change?"
Hopper's frown is gone before it can fully take form, turning into a laugh. "Oh, no. Sorry. I didn't think about that."
"Clearly," she grumbles, but she finds herself smiling, anyway. "Make sure you change before tomorrow's show, please."
"Yes, ma'am." He checks his watch as one of her leads makes an off-handed bye, Mrs. Hopper! over her shoulder. Joyce doesn't really get the chance to return it before she's already out the door.
Hop sighs, circling an arm around her shoulders. "Let's get outta here," he says, and she nods against him, fatigue starting to reach her, finally. She doesn't know how she's going to do this for the next couple, crazy nights, but she knows she will.