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This guy's walking down the street when he falls in a hole.
The walls are so steep he can't get out.
A doctor passes by and the guy shouts up,
'Hey you. Can you help me out?'
The doctor writes a prescription, throws it down in the hole and moves on.
Then a priest comes along and the guy shouts up,
'Father, I'm down in this hole can you help me out?'
The priest writes out a prayer, throws it down in the hole and moves on
Then a friend walks by,
'Hey, Joe, it's me can you help me out?'
And the friend jumps in the hole.
Our guy says,
'Are you stupid? Now we're both down here.'
The friend says,
'Yeah, but I've been down here before and I know the way out.'
He loves her, he loves her, he loves her.
“Are you sure these are the right notes?” He asks again, just to be sure that his homework is flawless. He needs this, badly, to not flunk out of his last English class ever.
“Hopper, would I ever give you substandard notes?” Joyce responds before turning back to her locker.
“I could kiss you right now,” he adds lowly as he sneaks a glance at her. Truer words. Never spoken. All that jazz.
“Just make sure your car starts tonight so we can actually get to Meredith’s party, okay?”
He’d rather they ditched the party. He’d rather she look at him and actually see him this time. But he keeps those damn thoughts to himself.
She isn’t his Joyce. Not today. Hasn’t been for over a month. He tries not to think about it. Maybe she really is sick, the splatters on his shoes would confirm it. But this was more than that - there was a light out in her eyes, the small one that twinkled when she finished a good book or made the perfect dick joke. It was gone and he didn’t know why.
At first he thought it was because she was pissed about him missing Meredith’s party, getting stuck at home with his tyrannical father. But it had gone on too long and didn’t feel like her grudges - those were tense and focused - this felt cold and empty.
He needed to know what was going on but he wouldn’t push it - that wasn’t his place. If he knew anything, he knew that forcing Joyce into a corner would only result in them both getting burned, his cheek still searing from the last time they argued and she outright slapped him. They’d both recognized it then, the heat that spiked like sparks between them, and it had scared them both into submission, apologies and silent oaths left unsaid.
But he had to figure out what was going on. Whatever it was it was eating away at her, radiating off of her like smoke, and he couldn’t help but worry that it would drag her under and away from him, somewhere she wouldn’t come back from. Somewhere he couldn’t go. Somewhere without him and her, together.
“Joyce, come back to the car,” he barked as she stumbled onto the shoulder of the road from the passenger seat.
He’d never seen her like this, disjointed and torn apart. It was freaking him the fuck out.
The weeks had started to blur into one another as Joyce pulled further and further away from her friends, segregating herself from their lunch conversations, hiding out at the back of class and giving up the secret smoke breaks that they used to share. He’d been determined not to give up on her though, remaining steadfast at her side as best he could even when she pushed back at him.
But now she was crying and he couldn’t let her walk away, not like this, that wasn’t the friendship they had.
“Joyce, hey, talk to me,” he added as he came around the side of the car, his own tears burning up inside of him as he pulled her against his chest, her tears soaking into his shirt.
This had gone on long enough. It wasn’t right. Something wasn’t right.
“You have to tell me what’s going on. I’ll help you. Whatever it is, we’ll fix it,” he promised, arms holding her too tightly. He could feel her shudder, her body forcing space between them. He remembered shouting:
“Don’t leave it like this.”
“Don’t leave me like this.”
And he knew it was too much then. A weight that would crush her. The thing that was wedged between them that was forcing her to quicken her pace into the treeline leaving him rejected, shattered, as she disappeared from view and the love he so badly wanted her to return.
Vietnam. Fuck Vietnam.
Look at where he was now, married, cutest kid on the planet and a mind that only assaulted him with memories when he had one too many beers to drink. Those were the nights that a country and a person dug into his skin and pulled at him until he couldn’t close his eyes.
He didn’t do that anymore, Diane hated it, so he gave it up and threw himself into his new life as a city beat cop and a family man.
It was what he wanted to get lost in. What he’d wanted all those years ago before Joyce up and left him to figure out his shit on his own. No word of goodbye, no explanation. He’d tried so hard not to be bitter and Vietnam had wiped it clean leaving him only with imaginings of what could have been.
But he was happy now. Or he was. The jury was still out.
Sara was sick again.
He was one drink away from that awful edge.
Everything collapsed in a big, bright, beautiful explosion. It dragged him under, drowned him and ran a crack through all he held dear.
Sara was gone. That was true.
Diane was gone. That was also true.
Hawkins had welcomed him back with a cold beer and easy prescriptions, the kind he found himself getting lost in as he started as the Chief of Police. He had to hide it - or at least pretend to hide the resemblance that he was a wreck - in order to stay employed but nights like these were too much and he couldn’t stop the way he tried to drown himself on solid land with round after round that the bartender didn’t question.
Sometime over the course of the night Joyce had appeared, all bad memories and sadness, her small frame still a shadow of his as she sat beside him and downed her drinks in time with him.
When they made it back to his trailer he’d pulled her to him, all instinct and messy history clouding into the press of his lips to her neck. But then she was standing and his joke was falling flat and she just stared at him. Mouth agape and torture scraped into her features.
And then she was talking. And he was hearing her. And everything raked over him like hot coals.
“I don’t remember how I got there. I don’t remember who I slept with. I don’t remember saying yes. I certainly didn’t want to get pregnant with a child I couldn’t look after. It was stolen from me, Hop. Someone stole my life from me. Stole… This.”
His training told him to say something, anything, to give her something to hold onto. He’d heard these situations before. They were fuzzy, but he’d heard them.
But a part of him - the shitty part where he stuffed down the thoughts of the soldiers’ crimes - didn’t want to believe was she was saying. Refused to put the pieces together and believe her. She would have told him then. She would have come to him. He’d been there for her.
So he sat there frozen as she wrapped her arms protectively around herself, watched her let herself out as the realization of what she’d said, what she might have experienced, flooded into him and ended with his fist embedded in his wall.
The vanishing of Will Byers was the catalyst to the careful life he’d built after returning to Hawkins. The one where he stayed away from Joyce Byers. The one where he couldn’t face her in the daylight for fear of his failures as her friend. As a man. As a cop.
He’d let her down and he couldn’t deal with it. So instead he added it to the laundry list of shit that gave him reason to drink every time he didn’t have to work. Put it down next to the reasons he checked with his one-night-stands before he took them home.
The vanishing of Will Byers forced him back into the land of the living and made him work and work and work until the body floated to the surface of the quarry.
Loss. It had pushed into him until there was no space left for him to breathe, no room to move or run or escape. Will Byers was dead and now he was the doctor telling this boy’s mother that there was nothing they could do. That there was nothing that they could do to save his daughter.
It choked him.
The look on Joyce’s face when he informed her. The look that tore every shred of small hope that he had pieced together with tape a glue over the last year. It destroyed him.
“He spoke to me Hopper, in the lights,” she insisted after a brief shake of her head. The look had disappeared and she was steadfast, determined, strong.
“Try to get some rest, Joyce,” he bid as he closed the door on her. Returning to his truck he stared at the small house that he’d worked so hard to avoid. The place that was home to one of his biggest regrets.
She was still his Joyce. Somewhere in there. The smart girl who’d been victimized three times by men - the hidden one, the ex one, and him. Maybe he needed to believe her this time. Maybe he’d spent too much time not believing her and that’s why they were here, estranged and in a constant state of conflict.
He decided to look then. To really look and see what she was seeing, through her eyes. Suspending his disbelief he followed the loose threads that pricked at the back of his mind until he was sliding his swiss army knife into rubber, his fingers pulling out stuffing instead of organs.
When he kneeled over the real body of Will Byers and forced his hands to compress his chest over and over again until the coughing brought him back to life - the same act that hadn’t saved his Sara - he knew then as Joyce clutched her boy that there was hope, even in all this shit they were wading through.
He made a deal with the devil then to give her back her son, to try to repay some of the unspoken debts he believed he owed to her. Disappearing into the agency he relived the worst moments of his missions in Vietnam until one day they let him go, gave him a free pass to keep the town under control and closed their active unit.
That’s when El finally came out of the woods - the girl having been a fighter who had seen too much, felt too much, suffered too much. He saw the parallels between them and refused to let her fall through the cracks like he’d done since coming back to Hawkins.
So he got himself clean. Started accompanying Joyce and Will to the doctor’s, even as he stood by and watched her fall for Bob Newby. Hid El away. Found himself in the process and when the monster’s came back he was strong enough to face them. Strong enough to be there for those who needed him.
Strong enough to feel human again.
She’s laying here, next to him, her dark eyes focused on his.
It hadn’t been what he expected when he dropped El off at the Snow Ball, not by a long shot. But somehow Joyce and him had found their way back to each other, even if just for this moment.
After their kiss - the one that had breathed new life into him as she forgave his trespasses - he’d offered up a warmer locale in the form of his trailer. She’d followed him in her own car, assured that she could leave whenever she’d wanted.
But she hadn’t yet. The dance would be ending soon and they would both have to go, but neither of them seemed willing to break the truce they’d forged in these stolen hours.
No. He just wanted to keep laying here. Watching her watching him. He could get lost in this.
“We can’t go back to when we were teenagers. But we can start again,” she whispered as he ran his hand across her cheek, letting it drift to the swoop of her t-shirt where it caught in his finger.
He didn’t want to say the wrong thing so he said nothing, scooting his knees until they pressed into hers. She mimicked the movements of his hand, tracing across his beard until her palm grazed the curve of his neck, exploring, trailing flames.
They’d never had this. Not ever. And it felt like they’d been robbed all these years - of this feeling and of each other. He had to seize it now. Had to believe that this time it would stick.
Time slows and rebuilds the bridges they’d shattered. It heals and grows the space between them and he feels like he’s climbed out of the hole, like his friend has finally shown him the way.
The pills didn’t save him. Jesus didn’t save him. But his friend, the one who’d been down a rabbit hole of her own and had somehow found her way out, was tugging him back into the world, one touch at a time, and goddammit he was going to follow her this time.