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Paperwork was the final boss of motivation… or more precisely, the purest form of human bullshit. All this documenting, filing, and stapling of goddamn forms didn’t solve a single real problem. It just buried paper under more paper. Jim was damn sure he hadn’t signed up for this kind of soul-crushing busywork when he took the Chief’s position.
“Son of a bitch,” he scoffed as the crumpled sheet of paper bounced off the rim of the trash can. God, he hated sitting here, wasting his night on trivial crap. Didn’t these people have any idea what actual problems looked like? A Demogorgon, for starters; this nightmare fueled monster that could rip a human apart in seconds. Or the Upside Down itself, lurking right beneath their feet like some twisted mirror world. Those were the threats that needed him.
He rubbed a hand down his face, then glanced at the clock. It was past ten already. The station was dead quiet, empty except for him. He was still here, because… well, he’d postponed the paperwork until the very last possible minute… again.
The phone shattered the silence like a firecracker, jolting him so hard he nearly toppled out of his chair. “Jesus Christ.”
Who in the world called at this hour? He sure as hell wasn’t expecting anyone. His first thought drifted to Jane, followed by a flicker of panic: had he broken another promise again? That he would be home by six, a time window which he perfectly missed today. But then he remembered that he’d been honest with her. He had told her straightforward that he’d be getting home late for the next few days, so he can take one or two days off to spend time with her.
Still… she wouldn’t just call the station. Did Jane even know the number of his office? With a skeptical grunt, Jim grabbed the receiver. “Hopper.”
“Jim! Thank God, listen…” Karen’s voice came through the line, a little too euphoric and unsteady. He could tell miles away she’d had a few drinks. “… you gotta do me a huge favor.” He rolled his eyes and prepared himself for the worst possible outcome. “Can you come and pick up Joyce from my place? Please?”
He rubbed the bridge of his nose, because he was fully aware what this whole call was about. “Am I your personal driver now, Karen?”
A long, dramatic sigh crackled through the phone. “Jim, please. She really needs to get home. We had… let’s just call it a girl’s night, okay?”
“Uh-huh.” He shook his head at the ceiling, the tapping of his fingernails against the desk sounded like a ticking bomb. Every nerve inside him screamed to just hang up and enjoy his evening… with his paperwork. He stared at the disconnect button, his thumb hovered over it, but Karen’s voice hurried to stop his escape.
“And clearly Joyce overdid it and… well, she started saying some things.”
“Some things?” he repeated slowly, like that would change his mind about picking her up.
“About you.”
Well, that did, in fact, change his mind. He fixed his posture into a straighter position. “About me?!”
Within a heartbeat the exhaustion in his bones was replaced by a fresh spike of unease. Joyce had been talking about him? Oh no. No, no, no. That didn’t sound like nothing. His mind started to spin through some worst-case scenarios; old arguments, things they’d never properly said out loud. Or worse… things they had.
Karen’s little laugh on the other end did nothing to calm him down. “Look, it’s not… that bad. But she is in no shape to-“
“I’ll be there in five minutes,” he ended the call by slamming the receiver down.
Screw the paperwork, but mostly, screw the alcohol.
He drifted the Blazer in front of the Wheelers’ driveway before he’d fully settled on anything. The plan he’d prepared during the drive was simple enough: get Joyce home as fast as humanly possible and pray she would not remember a damn thing by morning. After that, all he had to do was convince Karen not to give him shit about whatever Joyce had let slip tonight.
It was a straightforward plan… theoretically.
In reality, those never seemed to hold up.
“I am so gonna regret this,” he muttered under his breath as he killed the engine and climbed out of his Blazer. He’d barely taken two steps toward the house before the front door swung open. Karen greeted him with an enthusiastic wave, and leaned in for a hug like they were old friends at a reunion. Jim dodged to the side to avoid any contact with her. He had never seen her like this before. He knew Karen was a wine connoisseur… she had once spent five minutes lecturing him on the difference between a pinot noir and a che-hant…no… chee-an… whatever other red wine like it was a life-or-death situation. But this was a first.
Before he could ask for his passenger, Joyce appeared in the doorway, one hand braced against the frame to keep her upright. She swayed forward, caught herself on time and swayed back again. She was dangerously close to tipping either way.
Jim had seen her exhausted, furious, scared out of her mind, but never this drunk. He couldn’t even remember her drinking back in high school.
A flicker of anger hit him and he blamed Karen for all of this mess. She should have known better and cut Joyce off in time. But this was not the right place nor time to talk about responsibilities. Joyce lurched forward and Jim moved on pure reflex, catching her before she was about to faceplant on the lawn. She collided with his chest and mumbles a word that sounded vaguely like “Hop” into his shirt. Her arms flailed out to wrap loosely around his hips. It only lasted for half a second before they lost all their power and dropped back to her sides.
“Jesus, Joyce,” he breathed, one arm steady around her waist, “can you wal-“
She pitched forward again and he adjusted his grip just in time.
“No,” he answered for her, dry as dust. “No, you can’t.”
She made a small, frustrated noise and tried again to stand on her own.
This woman…
It lasted around two seconds before she gave up and sagged back into him. He had already lost all his patience, because these few meters to his Blazer would take hours if they tried to walk side by side. So, he acted pragmatically by lifting her off the ground and carrying her in bridal-style to his truck. Joyce let out a surprised little squeak that switched into quiet giggles. Something he hadn’t heard in years from her, and it made his heartbeat stumble.
Her head lolled against his shoulder and he sighed through his nose. “Don’t say anything,” he warned her. She didn’t listen.
“You are strong,” she mumbled and her hand reached for his upper arm. “Do you always look this good carrying people?”
“Why do I even try to have a normal conversation with you,” he muttered, mostly to himself. He ignored Karen in the background, who was still speaking to him.
He didn’t miss the way her fingers started wandering over his shirt. She was toying with his badge, the one pinned to his chest, her fingertips traced the edges with delighted concentration. Jim also made the mistake of glancing down at her.
Joyce had her lower lip caught gently beneath her teeth, she was completely focused on the movement of her fingers. His pulse began to kick hard against his ribs, a rush of heat climbing the back of his neck and spread to his cheeks. As a result he nearly walked straight into the passenger door of the Blazer.
Jim opened it one-handed and carefully eased Joyce onto the seat. Relief washed over him when she didn’t start protesting. He reached for the seatbelt, pulled it over her body and started to straighten, but the movement died before it had even begun, because something soft brushed against his skin.
Joyce’s hand had settled gently beneath his chin, and he forgot how to breathe. His pulse quickened, leaving him spellbound as he stared at her in quiet disbelief.
“Joyce?” he asked cautiously. His eyes flickered down to the belt as if he might have fastened it wrong, but he could not see any discomfort. She narrowed her eyes a little and turned his head to the left. “Hm,” she said. “I don’t remember you having three chins. Where am I supposed to kiss you now?”
His jaw dropped audibly. Did he… understand her correctly? Had she just stated she wanted to kiss him? No… she couldn’t have meant that… this was the alcohol talking. He swallowed hard and felt betrayed by his body which clearly was highly affected by her touch and words.
He shook his head and managed to move to the driver’s seat, because he had no idea what he could’ve responded to that. His hands were not quite as steady as he would have liked, when he pulled the Blazer onto the street. Her words rattled inside his head, refusing to leave him.
Where am I supposed to kiss you now?
It would have been so easy. Just a moment and he could have let her… leaned into whatever drunken whim had taken root of her, pretending that she meant it.
But what a coward of a man would he be then?
Whatever she felt and said right now belonged to the bottle. Decades of wanting her, if he was honest with himself, didn’t give him the right to take advantage of a foggy mind and loosened tongue. If Joyce really wanted to kiss him, she would remember it in the morning and she would say it with a clear head.
A soft sound dragged him from his thoughts. He glanced at Joyce, to find her already asleep, her cheek pressed against the window. The sight of her pulled a low chuckle from his chest. “You lasted what… thirty seconds?”
She answered with nothing more than a sleepy sigh. He eased his foot off the gas, slowing just enough that the uneven patches along the road wouldn’t jolt her awake as he drove the rest of the way in silence.
The porch light was out and he scanned the driveway twice just to be sure, but there was no sign of Jonathan’s car. Small mercies, he thought, and brought the truck to a halt. He moved around to her side to gather her up again. She didn’t stir this time, not until he’d stepped through the front door and into the hush of the hallway.
“Jim?” she rasped, her voice thick with sleep as she shifted in his arms.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to wake you.”
She hummed low in her throat, unbothered, and turned her face into the curve of his neck. “You smell good,” she breathed and nuzzled her nose against his skin, which made him almost drop her. Christ.
The heat that had been simmering flared again, even stronger this time. He kept moving forward, but her warm breath against his throat, and every small movement of her nose sent another spark along his spine. He was in dangerous territory now, being so close to her and hearing things she’d never say sober… it was too much. At that point, he had reached his limit.
The second he lowered Joyce onto the bed in her room, her hand shot out and grabbed his sleeve. “Don’t go,” she mumbled. “Stay. Please.”
“Joyce, you should sleep…”
“Don’t wanna be alone.” Her fingers tightened and it was the word alone that made the argument die in his throat.
His shoulders slumped in defeat as he sank down onto the edge of the mattress. “Fine. Five minutes.”
That should’ve been the end of it, but Joyce seemed to take advantage of the situation and moved into his arms until he had no choice but to lean back against the headboard. He did not have time to properly brace himself, because she curled into his side next, her head tucked under his chin and one arm draped across his chest.
“Joyce,” he warned her.
“You are so comfortable,” she said into his shirt. “Didn’t used to be. You were all bones back then.”
“Thanks,” he said dryly. “Real flattering.”
She made a small, content sound and snuggled even closer. “You are so nice to cuddle.”
“Joyce, I am still in my uniform.” He shifted slightly beneath her. “This can’t be comfortable for you.”
“Mm.” She frowned like she was giving the problem a serious thought. “Take it off then.”
He nearly choked. “Excuse me?!”
“The clothes,” she said it with an intensity like it was the obvious solution to it. “You can borrow some of mine.”
Jim glanced down at her, and then to himself. He used all his power to not laugh. “Your shirt wouldn’t even make it past my shoulder.”
“Fine,” she declared. “Then wear nothing.”
“I… what? Jesus Christ, Joyce.”
“Nothing.” She repeated.
His mouth went dry and his brain stalled somewhere around the word nothing. He cleared his throat and decided the safest option was to not dignify that with any kind of response. Joyce, for her part, seemed to have already forgotten she had said it. She just huffed and shifted closer to his side anyway.
He stared at the ceiling, painfully aware of every point where she was pressed against him, but her breathing slowed soon enough, and whatever storm she’d kicked up in him had nowhere to go but to burn quietly on its own.
“I should’ve kissed you.”
“What?” His voice cracked on the single syllable.
“Back in high school.” Joyce said it like it cost her nothing. But her words did cost him everything. At this moment, she had just reached into his chest and closed her hand around something he’d spent over thirty years keeping carefully out of reach.
He stopped breathing. Four words and the ground had tilted underneath him. His head drifted down to her, in the hope of finding some sign on her face where she knew what she’d just done to him… but her eyes were closed, her breathing even.
He sat there like an idiot. His heart went like a jackhammer. At seventeen, he would have given anything to hear her say that. Forty-some now and it landed with the same force as if no time had passed at all. Jim felt like he was still that same stupid kid who used to walk her home the long way just steal five more minutes with her.
Her head moved then as she tilted her face toward him, her eyes opening ever so slowly.
“Can I… kiss you now?”
Her hand cupped one side of his cheek and her touch burned on his skin immediately. Every nerve in his body had suddenly come alive at once. He didn’t trust himself to speak or to make a move.
Her body pushed upward, determined to close the last bit of space between them, and Jim had never been more tempted to just let her. His body reacted before his heart could talk him into anything stupid. Two fingers caught her gently beneath the chin, stopping her from any movement. Her breath ghosted warm against his mouth, he could smell the wine. His gaze dropped in a helpless act to her mouth, and he started already to lean into a dream thirty years in the making. One tiny shift and their lips would touch.
“Jim…?” The confusion in her voice should have been a warning enough.
He meant to hold her back, because he had every intention of it… right up until the exact moment his fingers forgot how to do their job. His grip on her chin loosened instead of tightened. A part of him decided half a second too slow that this was a fight he didn’t actually want to win. There would be no turning back once he crossed this line. Not with her.
He knew it for better, and he let it happen anyway.
Her mouth brushed his and the world tilted sideways. She kissed him like she did everything else; messy and certain all at once. He felt more than heard the small, satisfied noise she made against his lips, and it traveled straight down his spine. His hand slid from her jaw to cup the side of her face, his thumb moving along her cheekbone, and for three, four seconds he simply let himself have this.
The sound of her fingers twisting into his collar to tug him closer was what finally cut through his haze. He pulled back before he could think any better of it, breaking the kiss with a gasp that felt torn out of him rather than drawn. He kept his eyes shut because he wasn’t sure what she would see in them if he opened them now.
“Joyce.” He whispered her name. “We can’t do this.”
“Why not,” she murmured and chased him half an inch before he caught her shoulder and held her in place.
“Because you are drunk.” He forced the words out. “And I am not gonna be something you regret by morning.”
“I wouldn’t regret it.”
“You don’t know that.” Jim allowed himself one last touch, before he withdrew his hand and put actual distance between their bodies, because closeness was not a language his self-control understood tonight. “Ask me again tomorrow… if you remember it.”
She made a wounded noise of protest, tried to follow him again before her own eyelids betrayed her. “You are annoying.” Her whole body slowly sank back into the mattress. “Always wanting to do the right thing.”
“Somebody has to.”
Jim rose from the mattress and grabbed the blanket where it had bunched near her feet, and drew it up carefully. She exhaled into the fabric and snuggled further into it.
Past any reasonable point, he lingered there and let his gaze drift over her. Sleep had already smoothed all the fight out of her face. She looked so peaceful like this.
His lips still burned where hers had been, a warmth that refused to fade no matter how hard he tried to shake it off. What he wouldn’t give to lean back down and do it all over again, to feel the sweetness of her lips. Just once more and long enough to do it right this time, and to not be the one who pulled away first.
But reality reached for him like it always did with its merciless force, leaving nothing behind but an ache he knew too well. The old pain, accompanied by jealousy, that aimed at nothing and no one, but at every version of a life where some other man got to stand beside her.
A guardian… that was the shape he had taken in her life. Loving her had never been hard. It was the easiest thing he had ever done in his life… it just never once seemed to be enough.
« She does not know, the wind won’t tell,
Her heart turns elsewhere on a whim,
And he has learned the truth so well,
She was never meant for him.
A shadow guardian, unseen,
With sword and shield, his vows aligned,
To guard the light she has always been.
He will fend off every hidden threat,
Defend the dreams that light her sky,
Though he will never stand beside
The one that makes his heaven sigh. »
The first few seconds, when Jim opened his eyes, to this world made absolutely no sense. Gray morning light instead of the dark he remembered. A sharp crick in his neck was enough to make him hiss. And his back, for god’s sake, had apparently decided to file a complaint against every decision that had led him to sat down on the floor. He shifted and his butt joined the protest, that spending the night propped against a bed frame was not, in fact, a brilliant strategy for an old man like Jim. His hand came up to rub at his neck and his senses needed a full minute to place the room and everything else in order.
Five minutes had stretched into the better part of the night. He’d fallen asleep on the floor like some watchdog.
His joints cracked so loudly, it should’ve wake the dead. Despite the pain lingering in every body part now, he turned and looked down at Joyce who was still deeply sleeping. The blanket was tangled around her waist now, and mixed with the morning light, it made her look softer and younger.
He should go, let her wake up alone and spare himself whatever this was turning into. He was long overdue leaving her house anyway… and he needed to be home before sunrise, because Jane would be up soon. She was not a long sleeper. He could already make out the questions with the disappointment in her voice.
But his stubborn mind… refused to leave this place. Instead of exiting through the front door, he padded to the open kitchen area. The place was not unfamiliar, it was like his second home. He had to open a bunch of drawers before he found the coffee, and fed a handful of beans into the grinder to start the procedure. He was desperate for anything that might knock the fog out of his head and put some actual order back into it.
Small footsteps made him pivot. Joyce entered the kitchen, one hand pressed to her temple like she was trying to hold her head together. Her hair was a wild mess, dark waves tangled in every direction, it nearly took his knees out. Jim’s fingers tightened on the mug. Joyce looked so beautifully wrecked, and his eyes dropped to her lips a few times, it was hard not to.
“You want one?”
Joyce blinked at him, and she gave a tiny nod after a long moment of silence, like anything faster might give her a headache.
He poured coffee into another mug, then turned to the fridge. “I’ll put some lime in it.”
“Lime?”
“Helps with the head.”
She thanked him gratefully as he handed her the coffee.
He was so desperate to talk about last night, he wanted to. There was so much sitting behind his teeth, but none of them felt safe to let it out. Last night had peeled his heart raw, left it exposed in a dangerous way. If he opened his mouth now, he wasn’t sure what would come out.
They drank their coffee in silence, and the more time passed, the more awkward this whole situation became.
“I should…” He vaguely gestured toward the door, though his feet didn’t so much as shift a centimeter toward it.
Joyce looked like he had slapped her. The light in her eyes was replaced by a quieter and sadder emotion. Jim didn’t quite understand it, and the change of expression in her face made his chest tighten uncomfortably.
She gave him a small, short nod, and set the mugs aside without another word. He really was an idiot, wasn’t he?
“Look, Joyce…”
Her hands cupped his face before he managed another word out, and every thought in his head was wiped out. He dared not to move or to take a breath. Her palms were warm against his skin, and he was distantly aware that his pulse had started slamming so hard against his ribs he could feel it up into his ears. Wide-eyed, he watched her rise up onto her toes, and pressing a soft kiss at the corner of his mouth. One of his knees began to tremble, the world began to blur and a wave of dizziness shot through him.
His hands hovered uselessly in the air, fingers twitching like they’d forgotten what hands were even for.
Did that… just happen?
Do something, idiot!
But he couldn’t, he was too undone by the ghost of her kiss.
“Can I… kiss you now?” she asked with a soft smile, her cheeks bloomed with a deeper shade of pink. Her hands never left his face. Her fingertips drifted featherlight along his jaw, tracing the rough line of his stubble before her thumbs brushed over his cheeks. Every touch felt impossibly soft and each one struck him with so much force that it stole his breath from his lungs.
“I…” She let out a tiny, embarrassed laugh, dropping her gaze for the briefest second before reconnecting with his. “I don’t regret it.”
“I wouldn’t regret it.” - “You don’t know that.”
With a mixture of hope and uncertainty her eyes searched for his… and he had to admit, he had stared into those eyes for more than half his life. Jim had seen them filled with anger, grief and joy, but never like this… never filled with this much of love and affection.
His mouth hung open in a useless manner of disbelief.
The silence stretched on and her confidence that had kind of carried her this far began to crumble visibly.
“Oh… I.. I didn’t mean to…” she mumbled, her smile about to falter. “I wasn’t trying to make things weird. I just thought… after yesterday.” She shook her head with a soft groan. “Forget I said anything, okay? I should probably just… thank you. For bringing me home… and fo-“
Jim finally found himself again. Whatever she wanted to say died on her lips as he kissed the rest of her words away. His hands slid up into her hair, letting his fingers thread gently through the messy waves, and he angled her head just slightly to fit her mouth more perfectly against his. Her lips parted on a soft, shaky breath, and when her tongue brushed against his, he answered with a low groan, a sound he didn’t even try to hold back.
Joyce smiled at him, a little dazed so, and Jim felt his own mouth twitch in response, when they had to break apart for some oxygen.
All those years he had guarded her from the shadows and had loved her in silence. After all the battles, all the losses, and all the moments where Jim believed he would only ever be her protector, he understood that there had always been a place for him beside her… he just never believed it was his to take.