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Hooper assessed the rear compartment of the chopper. Two seats, no foot room. There are likewise two seats in the cockpit. Dmitri will be sitting up front holding a gun to Yuri's head.
Murry came up to stand beside him. “Joyce is gonna have to sit in someone's lap," he points out with way too much enthusiasm. He'd been ribbing them ever since he walked into the church and declared: "it smells like the resolution of sexual tension in this gentile house of God." An awkward silence fell…then and now.
Hopper did not know when things took a strange turn between him and Joyce. After they'd…made love in the church everything seemed fine. Lingering looks that turned into kisses even. His best guess was that things had gone sideways right after Joyce made the pronouncement about the shadow thing swirling around meaning the gate in Hawkins was open. He could not be positive, but he thought he'd seen her mouth, 'I should have known' to herself as her expressive brows folded with worry for the kids. Though she'd risked her life to save his during the fight, and she currently clung to his hand like she'd never let go, she felt distant. And she wasn’t volunteering to sit with him. It hurt.
"Well you're always welcome in my lap," Murray offered.
Joyce opened her mouth to say something, but Hopper scooped her up and climbed into chopper. "She's with me," he snarled at a man he'd once considered a friend.
"Put me down, jackass," Joyce screeched as she pounded his shoulder with her tiny fists. It actually felt kind of good though he knew he'd pay for it later.
Hopper settled into the seat careful of Joyce's head and the narrow confines of the chopper, before putting her down, perhaps a little harder than necessary, because she was struggling. A strangled little whimper slipped through her lips and the sound tore at Hop's gut. He let go of her reflexively remembering how he'd thrust into her ruthlessly only hours ago.
She turned on him her eyes bright with indignation and her face scrunched up in fury. It was terrifying and cute all at once. "Do. Not. Manhandle. Me. Jim. Hopper." She punctuated each word with a poke to his chest.
"Go ahead and sit with your Hutch then." He said crossing his arms over his chest. He had no idea why he was yelling at her.
Maybe it was to drown out Murray saying, "Do you two need to be dropped off back at the church, cuz I thought you two were worried about your kids," as he pulled himself awkwardly into the helicopter and then hauled himself into the other seat.
Joyce had been about to yell something back at him he was sure, but Murray’s words took all the fight out of her. There was so little room to stand awkwardly in the tiny amount of foot space in front seats that even tiny Joyce had to hunch. The chopper started to lift off and she was thrown forward so that she put a hand out to catch herself on both his and Murray’s shoulders.
Hop unfolded his arms to steady her. She glared at him. "Thank you for your kind offer Murray," she said before taking a seat gingerly in the startled man's lap.
Murray, for his part, looked utterly at a loss for where to put his hands. Wisely he pressed them to the sides of his own thighs. This was a good choice for his continued existence, but a bad one for Joyce's stability. The chopper banked and she all but fell into Hopper. And he heard her yelp again.
"Are you sure you don't just want to sit here?" he growled mad that he’d hurt her.
“With an offer like that, you can go fuck yourself, Jim Hopper,” she said as she pried Murray's hands off his thighs and folded them across her middle.
Jim reared back like he had been slapped. He hadn't heard Joyce drop an ef bomb on anyone but Lonny since high school. She turned her back on him and looked out at the snowy landscape.
...
A few hours later, Joyce was dozing in his arms. After an hour of giving him the cold shoulder, Joyce began to sag until she slumped across Murray's head in a way that made it nearly impossible for the son of a bitch to breathe. When he’d wheezed “little help,” Jim had almost left him to smoother, but he supposed he owed the bastard his life. Hopper carefully transferred a sleeping Joyce into his lap. As he cradled her in his arms something loosened in his chest and he felt like he could breathe freely again. Her cheek pressed against his heart was the best feeling he’d had in a very long time, even better than the sex they’d had back in the church. That had blown his mind and his body more than once, but this holding her while she slept was blowing up his heart. Making it bigger than he ever thought it would get again.
It wasn’t until he saw a tear glinting like a star in night of Joyce's hair that he realized he was leaking again. Fuck, he thought as he used the hand that was not wrapped around Joyce’s shoulder to scrub his face. He was no stranger to crying, but heat rose in his face at the thought of crying during sex. Which, truth be told, he’d done more than his fair share of. Also true was that once it happened he usually didn’t see the woman again. More often than not, it was by her choice.
His tears coursed faster at the thought that Joyce might start coming up with reasons not to see him once they got back to Hawkins or California or wherever the hell she wanted to be. He was half afraid his waterworks would wake her, but these tears were absent the great wracking sobs that had torn loose from him as he’d broken himself on the shores of Joyce’s body.
Hopper shook his head at the strangely poetic turn his thoughts had taken. Days awake must be taking their toll he thought, as he wiped his face again. He knew he should sleep, but the thought of leaving Joyce undefended was too much for him. It’s not that he had anything to fear from Murray who freed of Joyce had promptly curled up and gone to sleep. And Jim trusted Dmitri with his life up in the cock pit steering them home and making sure Yuri didn't pull any shit. Dmitri had the rendezvous coordinates for meeting Owen's men somewhere in the middle of Alaska and Hopper was confident in the Russian’s ability to get the job done. Assurances had been made concerning getting his family out of Russia in return for his help. No, the fear that kept Jim awake, came from a much deeper place.
Hop supposed that he feared being happy. And holding Joyce made him so fucking happy. Historically every time he’d been happy something terrible had come to wreck it. Sarah’s cancer. Monsters from a neighboring universe. An unexpected trip to Russia. He couldn’t close his eyes on Joyce because he wanted to savor every minute with her until she woke up and realized he was a pathetic old bastard that cried during sex.
“So you really are just going to watch her like a love-sick idiot for the entire flight to Alaska,” Murry hollered from the next seat over the sound of the chopper.
Hopper narrowed his eyes at his quasi-friend, bringing his free hand up to shield Joyce’s ears. “Shut the fuck up. You’ll wake her,” Jim whispered loudly. The sound probably didn’t carry to Murray, but he was sure the other man could read those words off his lips. He was certain that many many people had told Murray to shut the fuck up. If Jim was honest with himself he was more afraid of Murray’s commentary making things stranger between him and Joyce than waking her up. Clearly, they were into each other, but neither had said anything about love. He did love her, but if the way things had ended with Diane had taught him anything it was that love had nothing to do with whether people stayed together. He didn't actually even know if Joyce was single. They had hooked up in shady times before...
Murry batted his hand in the air and blew a raspberry as if they were not fleeing Russia in a rickety Vietnam-era chopper. “She’s been up for days worrying about you. I bet she hasn’t had a good night's sleep in eight months.”
“Yeah and I bet raising three teenagers keeps you up at night,” he scoffed hating that he’d saddled her with another burden. Loving that she’d stepped in and made sure that El was taken care of.
“Are you kidding me?” Murray sat up and scooted so he was shoulder to shoulder with Jim. “She is totally clueless about Jonathan’s codependent relationship with his dealer. Nor does she know that the girl is leaning into violent tendencies. Or that her youngest is a closet case caught in a love triangle with his stepsister and her boyfriend. The kicker is that Joyce just left them all together to fend for themselves, while she dropped all her responsibilities to come rescue you. At no time was anyone checking to see how far open a door was Jim.”
Jim gaped in horror at the recumbent woman in his arms. Then he looked back up at Murray. “Stepsister?”
“She didn’t tell you, you were consummating a marriage in the church?” Murray threw his head back and cackled like a muppet. “That devious little minx. I can’t even count the levels of irony in that one. You have the honor of clutching the widow Hopper to your chest. I mean she doesn’t go by-”
Jim shot his arm out, curled his fist in Murray’s shirt, and hauled the man up to within an inch of his face so he could not possibly miss a word of his next question because in this moment Murray’s life was hanging in the balance. “What...the…fuck…are…you…talking…about?!”
“In order to get custody of Jane Hopper, Joyce had to be her stepmother. You were married, we thought posthumously, in the Church of Owens via some damn good forgeries. I could have done better, but no one asked me. I did sign the marriage license as best man and witness though.”
Jim’s fist uncurled and Murray dropped a few inches back into his seat. Jim had been kicked in the chest a lot lately with steel-toed boots, but never had it felt so fucking delightful. “Joyce Byers is my wife?”
He hadn’t meant to say it out loud, but when Murry answered, “Yes,” a bit morosely Jim looked over him.
“What’s wrong?”
“I should have let her tell you. I wanted to do it if she hadn’t just so you could have your reaction without hurting her feelings, but she deserves to see the look on your face right now.” Murray reached for Joyce, but Jim caught his wrist.
“Don’t you fucking dare,” he growled. “And what do you mean, let me have my reaction. Did you think I’d be mad?” Hopper was the furthest from mad that he'd ever been.
“Not to put too fine a point on it, but you’re a bit of a man whore and Joyce was afraid you might feel trapped. She has the annulment papers with her. Wait. She didn’t ask you to sign anything before you did the deed did she?”
Jim felt kicked again, this time in the nuts. “Man whore? I haven’t been on a date since El moved into the cabin.” Murry gave him a look that patently acknowledged a little house out on the state line that all men in the area knew of, but didn't talk about. “A man has needs,” Hopper protested even as heat rose in his cheeks.
“And this is why I think Joyce was nervous about telling you about the marriage. I don’t know how much you know about her first marriage-“
“I know that Lonny was a cheating asshole who knocked her around and I couldn’t do a damn thing about it because she wouldn’t press charges against the cock sucker.”
“Ok so you understand why she never intended to be married to a living man again.”
“And she told you all this?”
“Well not in so many words, but yeah. I don’t know if you know this, but Joyce is a very lonely woman who has made her kids the center of her life for a very long time. She couldn’t talk to them about this. And she couldn’t exactly confide in Karen Wheeler about her fears that her secret marriage to the Chief would have him turning in his grave if she hadn’t vaporized him with her own hand.”
A pit of deep understanding opened in his stomach more intense than all the emotional hits he’d just taken. “Are you telling me that Joyce has been losing sleep because she blames herself for my death?”
Strangely, Murray beamed at him. “I’m really proud of you Jim. You got there a lot quicker than I thought. I really expected to have to break it down into much smaller words for you.”
“Yeah well, I’ve had a lot of time to think lately,” Jim rumbled as he gazed at... his wife.
…
Joyce’s eyes fluttered open to see Jim peering down at her with a tenderness and affection that took her breath away. She’d been dreaming that Murray married them back in the Russian Church. The vows had taken the form of criticism of her parenting. Relieved that the nightmare was fading into a dream, Joyce reached up and pressed Hop’s face to hers. Her first hint that she might not be dreaming was the prickly stubble at the back of Hopper’s head. Where is all the thick hair that I love running my fingers through, she thought muzzily. Further reality asserted itself when lips that were sharp with stubble instead of bristly with a Magnum 'stache were so close, she could almost feel them. “I’m not dreaming am I?”
“Do you dream about this often?” She felt the words rumble from all around her and Joyce realized that Hopper was holding her across his lap. There was a nagging feeling that she should be mad about something, but the tear tracks on Jim’s gaunt cheeks melted that away. This still had to be a dream though because why else would Jim be holding her? She’d killed him.
“Only every night,” she confessed to this dream of Hop. The arms holding her bunched tighter and something between a sigh and a growl ghosted over. She cuddled closer to him trying to burrow into the echo of his solid strength. “I’ve missed you so much.” She felt a spikey kiss pressed to her forehead and she sobbed in frustration. Hopper had been dropping kisses on her forehead since high school. So many times she’d wish she were brave enough to tilt her head back and take one on lips like a woman and not the kid sister/quirky neighbor that he obviously thought of her as. But she was afraid. If she couldn’t keep a worthless deadbeat like Lonny how could she possibly keep a man like Jim? Everything had been so easy with Bob who had been so manageable. She had killed him too. Familiar tears welled up and over.
The arms around her tightened again with a steady pressure. “Shhh Joyce, I’m here. I’m alive.” She blinked tears out of her eyes and it was as if her vision had been washed clear. Jim’s tender expression was now marred with deep concern. “You didn’t kill me.”
“I did though. I turned the key.”
“To save El. That’s the choice I’d want you to make every time.”
“I know. But now that I’ve lost you, I don’t think I could do it again.”
“Hopefully, you won't have to. I mean, there’s no one else right? Cuz I sure won't be pining for my Russian boyfriend.”
His question took her so by surprise that she had to lean back and just stare at him for a minute to make sure he wasn’t kidding. His eyes were an intent steel blue and there was no mustache to twitch to give away the joke, only a grim line of his mouth. Sure there had been times when it had all just been too much and they came together out of need, but the church had been something bigger. Hadn't it? A loud she said, “Have you lost your mind?”
“On several occasions. But in this, I feel justified in asking. I’m sure California is full of Bobs. Look I’m not blaming you for getting on with your life if you did. Shit Joyce I prayed for before I made friends with Dmitri. I just want you to know that I’ll wait. No one is perfect. He’ll screw up, and when he does-“
“Just stop. Do you really think that I would…” She lowered her voice as if their conversation could possibly be overheard over the sound of the chopper. Murry was sleeping again on the other side of the compartment “do what we did in the church if there was someone else?”
“That’s not a no. We've gotten carried away before.”
“That was different. We were different then." He continued to give her his cop face. She gave in with a sinking feeling. Maybe they weren't different. "No," she said evenly, "there is no one else.”
His face split in a grin to rival the one he’d worn as a boy. “Great! Also, I’m not signing shit.”
“What?” she asked trying to think through the fog of despair now swathing her brain.
Jim planted another kiss between her eyebrows. “Don’t worry about it. Go back to sleep. I got you.” His deep voice hoarse with some powerful emotion thrumming all around her apparently acted as a command that Joyce was powerless to resist as she slipped back into a deep sleep.