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“So, what d’you need?”
He’s trying to sound breezy and unconcerned, but he can feel sweat pricking the palms of his hands. Brenner’s office is sterile, the desk almost completely bare except for a nameplate. (Whereas Hop’s own is cluttered, a constant source of despair for Flo: an overflowing ashtray, piles of paperwork, some old newspapers, a used mug with a layer dusting the bottom that resembles archaeological residue more than coffee.)
“First off, we appreciate your cooperation.” The doctor’s teeth are too white, his hair too neatly combed. Hop feels like he’s signed a deal with the devil. His hands knot and unknot against his knees.
“There’s a small town we’d like you to visit.” A manila folder hits the table, crammed with papers, photos, a map with a town name circled in red. “There’s a base near Laurel, but radio and phones aren’t getting through anymore, and we haven’t heard from them in a week. We can’t send in a full contingent of agents—it’d raise too much attention—but one man could go check it out, see if everything’s on the level. Consider it a road trip. A vacation.”
He instantly thinks of a box in the woods, and a girl who might starve if he stops leaving out the food. It’s like feeding a cat. He would have to find someone to pick up the slack if he leaves.
“I don’t do vacations,” he says flatly.
“Well. People do take breaks, don’t they? Find a nice lady friend to take with you. We know you aren’t exactly unpopular.”
He shouldn’t be surprised that they know these things about him; he wonders what the folder on Jim Hopper looks like at the base.
“Need we remind you that you’re ours?” Brenner continues, after the pause goes on a bit too long. “In exchange for letting you and Mrs. Byers into the lab, you would later provide whatever service we required from you. Those were the terms. You’re experienced with this sort of… irregularity, so you’re a good everyman to send into the situation.”
“Experienced in mopping up your messes, you mean.”
Brenner’s expression freezes on his face. He looks like a waxen figure.
But Hop’s already letting out a defeated grunt, feeling that contract tugging at his conscience, his guilt. “Fine. I’ll go.”
“Hey, Joyce.” His voice is gravelly over the phone, and he has to clear his throat. He hasn’t had his coffee yet. Why did he tackle this conversation before coffee?
“Hiya, Hop. What’s up?”
“So, I have to head out of town soon. Temporarily. There’s something over in Laurel that I’ve got to check out.” He’d briefly considered hiding the real reason behind the trip, but then discarded that thought just as quickly. He doesn’t lie to Joyce. “Come with?”
“Me? Leave? I mean, the boys…” There’s an anxious yearning in her voice. She’d settled down in the months since getting Will back (no longer channelling that frenetic, frazzled energy, that feverish light in her eyes, the fingernails bitten down to the root). But he’s seen her hovering at the grocery store, resting a possessive hand on Will’s shoulder; the compulsive straightening of Jonathan’s collar, smoothing down his hair. She’s always fretting over and keeping a hand on her boys, as if to remind herself that they’re still there. Still alive.
Having been a restless teenaged boy himself once, he has an idea of how much that must rankle them.
“You need a break. Call the Wheelers, they can probably take ‘em in. And the kids would probably appreciate it. Sleepovers and pancakes—it’d be like a vacation for them, too.”
“I don’t know,” Joyce says reluctantly.
Hop is pacing his room like a restless wolf, the coils of the phone twisting and gnarling around him until he’s hopelessly entwined. He forces himself to be still, placing a hand against the wood paneling of the wall. Anchoring and steadying.
He looks at his small, shitty, dingy house, and the empty bottles lined up along the table like soldiers, and the next word that slips out is unexpected, even for him.
“Please.”
There’s a long silence, with the occasional staticky crackle on the line.
Finally, Hop hears her exhale. “Okay.”
He’s done his best to clean out his car, vacuuming up the crumbs that have accumulated, clearing out the empty bottles that were rolling in the back. The mirror’s dangling with a couple new air fresheners, trying to sift out the smell of stale cigarettes.
As soon as they start driving and get out of Hawkins, Hop thought he might feel antsy and nervous to leave his hometown behind—but his heart loosens instead. Joyce unfolds a map across the dashboard, paper crinkling, and squints at the route needed to get to Laurel.
Once they hit the highway he casts a sidelong glance at his passenger, watching her hair whipping in the wind from the open window, her face lit up.
It only takes about two and a half hours to get to Laurel. The rustbucket Hop calls his car breezes in past the outer limits, and Joyce’s head snaps around to read the sign as they pass by: WELCOME TO LAUREL! POP. 506
“Even smaller than Hawkins,” she points out.
They pull into the main street, which is anemic and empty: its most prominent feature is a diner with a neon sign, currently off, advertising the town’s best rhubarb pie. Hop’s stomach gives an answering grumble. He looks abashed and tries to ignore it, but Joyce has that knowing look in her eye; she’s dealt with starving boys before.
“We should grab a bite,” she says, as if it was her idea, and he nods in gratitude.
The car coasts into a parking space, the engine clicks off, and then there’s silence. Hop climbs out and stretches his legs, pressing at a crick in his spine, and re-settles his hat on his head; wearing it isn’t strictly necessary, but he finds it comforting. (Plus, it hides where his hair is thinning at the back.)
“Why are we here anyway, Hop?”
“To be honest, I’m not exactly sure.” He’s standing beside the car, surveying the too-still streets. Something about this town doesn’t sit right with him. It’s a prickling uneasiness at the back of his neck.
But the bell of the diner rings as they enter, and apart from the fact that it’s dead-empty, it looks terribly normal: checkerboard designs, Formica tabletops, fraying booths. “Howdy, strangers,” the lone server says as he polishes a glass.
“Hi,” Hop responds with a sunny smile; the Hawkins chief of police is usually dour, but he can ham up the charm whenever he needs to, cranking up the charisma when he needs information from someone. “We’re new here, obviously. Can you point us to the nearest motel?”
“We’ve only got the one here in Laurel. Funny time of year for a vacation.”
“We just had to try out your rhubarb pie. And two cups of coffee, please.” Joyce has that mischievous edge to her mouth that he hasn’t seen in ages (for a moment, he’s surprised by how much he missed it, and then how much he realises he likes it). She slides onto one of the fire engine-red stools, the plastic squeaking beneath her. The man salutes, then goes off to fetch some clean mugs.
While he’s gone, the pair take in the abandoned diner. “It sure doesn’t look like much,” Hop says quietly, out of the corner of his mouth, and Joyce digs her elbow into his side. (She’s starting to open up, feeling companionable and loose around him. Like being around an old friend, which of course he is.)
“So, what’s the first step, Hopper?” she asks, and for a moment it seems like she’s trying to imitate one of the cops he works with. But before he can answer, the server returns, a clean mug dangling from his fingertips. “Howdy, strangers,” he says. “Welcome to Laurel. Can I take your order?”
Joyce and Hop look at each other.
“We already ordered,” she says gently.
The man deadpans back, looking from one visitor to the other, brow crinkling. “Is this some kind of joke? Or did Betsy come out and take your order? She’s supposed to stay in the kitchen, but…”
Joyce falls silent then. Hop can read the indefinable anxiety that’s settled into her body: that tightening of her fingertips on the table, a stiffening of the shoulders, like a deer ready to bolt.
His wide hand settles over hers, a reassuring weight to keep her calm.
“We’ll have a slice of rhubarb pie and two cups of coffee,” Hop says, his voice level, despite his uneasiness now upgrading itself to official anxiety.
He’s digging up a town map and laying it out across the diner table, an urgency in his movements now that he has a better idea of what’s fracturing in Laurel, Indiana. He searches for the military base that they told him was here. And Joyce is looking at him thoughtfully over the edge of her coffee until she speaks up again, and he jolts.
“Brenner sent you here, didn’t he.”
He doesn’t ever lie to this woman, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t in a tight spot. Hop’s jaw goes taut for a moment, but that beat of silence tells her everything she needs to know. She sighs, interlaces her fingers more closely around her hot coffee. “That doctor…” she starts, but then peters out. Anything she has to say is too uncharitable to be voiced. “What exactly does he have on you?”
Hop thinks of a stack of orange prescription bottles, a list of anti-anxiety medications, and a death threat. The lengths he went through to bring her son back. He can’t tell her that, though: can’t admit that the noose around his neck and the leash held firmly in Martin Brenner’s hand leads all the way back through Will Byers.
“I’m just checking out what’s gone wrong in this town. But if it ever seems like it’s getting dangerous, you’re out of here. Got it? You take these keys,” he gestures to the keyring on the table, “and you get gone.”
She’s thinking through something, putting the words together, and finally seems to make up her mind: “Hop. If those suits are tearing any other families or towns apart, in any way, then I’m helping you fix it too. Got it?”
It’s the sort of voice that brooks no argument. A steady, level statement of fact, the same way she might instruct her boys to come home on time, or do the dishes, or take out the trash.
And he doesn’t want to admit it, but he doesn’t want to be alone here, either.
“Alright,” the cop relents. “Thank you.”
The people in this town don’t even know that there’s something wrong.
They can carry on a conversation just fine—they’re friendly small-town people, nothing unusual about them—but the moment the outsiders step outside and then turn around to return, the clock resets. It’s like it never happened.
The fourth time this happens (they’re starting to test it now, methodically working their way through the open shops, Hopper’s cop instincts raring in full-tilt), Joyce gives a bleak laugh. “I was about to ask what in the world could be causing this,” she says, “but then, considering what happened in Hawkins…”
She always refers to it in the general, not naming her son as one of the things that went wrong in Hawkins. It almost seems superstitious: if she names the Upside-Down and Will in the same sentence, perhaps it might swallow him up again.
“We’ll fix it,” Hopper says. “In the meantime, we could maybe bunk up in the next town over? Not be right in the heart of this.”
“Feeling antsy, Hop?””
“Just to be on the safe side. I don’t like what’s going on here.”
It’s easier said than done, however: the rustbucket rumbles its way out of town (NOW LEAVING LAUREL—COME BACK SOON!) and rattles down the road for a while.
And then there’s a glimpse of another winking sign in the distance, and once again, Joyce has her face against the window as it approaches.
WELCOME TO LAUREL! POP. 506
“What the…” Hopper says, hands gripping the steering wheel.
“Do it again,” Joyce orders, and he has no choice but to obey. They keep driving straight forward: no intersections, no turning left or right, just one long ribbon of road unrolling ahead of them and then it happens again.
NOW LEAVING LAUREL—COME BACK SOON!
WELCOME TO LAUREL! POP. 506
The town loops back in on itself. It’s a Mobius strip, rolling them right back where they started.
Joyce rests her hand against the cool glass of the window, but she feels sick.
“Well, that’s not good,” she says.
It’s too late to drive out and check out the base itself, so they admit defeat and check in for the rest of the day. There’s no leaving Laurel, it seems.
But in all this, he forgot what it might look like sharing a single motel room. (None of them are rich enough to spring for two, and Brenner isn’t exactly paying him a stipend.)
“Shit,” Hopper growls as he stands stock-still in the doorway, mortified. “I asked them for double beds—”
Joyce’s fingers are tight around the strap of her duffel bag, but she presses past him with a no-nonsense stride. “It’s nothing I haven’t seen before. Plus I’m a grown girl, Hop. As long as you promise to be a gentleman, I think we’ll do just fine.”
Call me Jim, he thinks.
It’s hard to sleep in a bed with someone and not end up squirming closer for heat: shoulder to shoulder, chest against back, an arm looped companionably over her midriff. He didn’t even realise how hard it would be until he’s here, lying in this bed, staring hopelessly up at that ceiling. He almost wants to build a wall of pillows between them, an unbreachable barrier to protect Joyce Byers from his wandering hands and unconscious desires.
Hop’s a dog, he knows he’s a dog, the guys at the department have laughed about his habits long enough—but he is genuinely concerned about this. He doesn’t trust himself. Asleep, he might instinctively think she’s… well, someone else. His ex-wife. Some random take-home from the Hawkins bar. Someone.
But they manage, somehow. He’s intensely aware of Joyce’s weight on the mattress beside him, and the sound of her breath. There’s her dark hair on his pillow and her face turned into the blanket, his hands exaggeratedly against his sides, and he only sleeps a few hours before he’s up at the crack of dawn and goes walking to stretch his legs, to buy some crappy diner coffee and bring it back in styrofoam cups to wake her up.
Despite the lack of sleep, this is nice. He could get used to this.
He’s the first man in a while that she trusts.
Lonnie created a new default for men: they lie, they steal the hard-earned money out of your purse for their next get-rich-quick scheme, they split when things get too tough, they cheat on you, they get sloppy with drink and press you against the kitchen counter. They’re bums, deadbeats.
And Jim drinks too much, sure, but at least he’s there. When everything was at its absolute worst, he listened. They walked into that nightmare realm together and he was right by her side, almost hand-in-hand as he put his life on the line to save her son.
And as much as she’d like to block out almost every single moment from the time that Will was away—she can’t forget that.
Hop wakes up and glances at his right wrist.
He reassures himself that the blue hair ribbons are still there. A small flash of colour, a tethering anchor.
“Howdy, strangers,” the server at the diner says as they walk in for breakfast (his nametag says RICHIE).
“Good lord,” Joyce says, and Hopper has to concentrate to hold back a wave of laughter.
“Welcome to Laurel. Can I take your orders?”
“Just a cup of black coffee for me, thanks,” the cop cuts in. “And could you tell me a bit about that military base over on the west side of town? I’ve got a buddy who works over there, so we figured we might stop by to visit him while we’re passing through.”
He delivers the lie smoothly, and Joyce finds herself watching him. It’s almost like following a different person. His whole demeanour shifts, brightens.
Richie’s shaking his head, though. “Sorry. Wish I could be of use, but they’re secretive up there—if you haven’t got the clearance then they don’t want to say anything about what they’re working on. We’ve had a few of the soldiers come in here, but they don’t talk to folks.”
Hop leans over the map on the table again, while Joyce takes over, chatting up the server. “Have you noticed anything… strange?”
“Strange like what?”
“People repeating themselves a lot? Maybe like they’ve got short-term memory loss?” she suggests.
His brow crinkles again, exactly like it did yesterday. “I can’t say as I have. Why?”
“Just wondering.”
They’re standing on one side of the base, heads craned to look at the somber grey buildings, the unmarked walls and gates, the utterly unwelcoming facade.
“I could punch out some more security guards, I guess,” Hopper muses, “but I don’t think that’s gonna get me far as a life plan.”
“Are you sure?”
“Pretty sure.”
She’s making him smile. It’s an unfamiliar feeling; usually the only thing that can do that is the memory of Sarah, those small precious moments of light before he slips back out of his lies or his well of whiskey and remembers that she really is gone, that there’s no pretending she isn’t.
But still. He’s having fun, somehow.
“Funny time of year for—”
“—a vacation,” Joyce finishes, and looks far too pleased with herself at Richie’s thunderstruck expression.
The pair of them are sitting awake on the bed in the hotel room; Hop is propped up against the wall, alternating between a cigarette and a glass of whiskey, while Joyce leans forward, her legs curled under her as she pores over the map again, newly-labelled with their recon about the entrances and exits. Her own drink rests on her knee, barely touched.
For an aching moment it reminds him too much of domesticity, of life with Diane, nightcaps and long low conversations after midnight. (And then he shoves the memory away, shuts it down. His fingers twitch for his drink, and so he takes another deep swig of the whiskey.)
“So,” the woman speaks up suddenly, casting him a sidelong look. “Are you going to do his dirty work for him forever?”
“That isn’t what this is about.” He’s too-aware that that’s exactly how he described it to Brenner himself.
“That’s what it looks like to me, Hop.”
He shifts, straightens, takes another drink. “This is the first one I’ve taken on for them.”
“But not the last?”
“I’m hopin’ it’s the last. How many fuckups can one single agency make?”
He meant it as a joke, tried to bare his teeth in something resembling a smile, but it doesn’t ring right and Joyce can tell. Joyce rests a hand on his arm, and then her fingers curl into a fist in the sleeve of his shirt.
Hopper doesn’t exactly shrug out of it, but his heart is pounding hollowly in his chest.
There are so many things he could say here. To try to explain..
That Will Byers’ disappearance was the first time he’d felt alive, truly alive, in years. That it helped him climb out of that pile of empty bottles and prescription pills. That it was the first time he’d actually accomplished something fucking worthwhile in his life since Sarah’s birth. That her son gave his life meaning again; that he could save the boy even if he’d utterly failed to save his own daughter.
He doesn’t say any of this. He finishes the rest of his drink, sets it aside, grinds out the cigarette for good measure, and rolls away from her.
She murmurs an apology against his shoulder an hour later. She thinks he’s asleep; he isn’t.
Hop wakes up and glances at his right wrist.
He reassures himself that the blue hair ribbons are still there. A small flash of colour, a tethering anchor.
He buys a pair of bolt-cutters.
Breaking and entering again, he thinks, dryly, as they snip through the fence in the afternoon. They find their way to the side of the building, Hopper boosts Joyce over the next wall, and she unlocks the gate from the inside.
Above them, a radio tower rises up from the sea of buildings, its framework a rickety skeleton. There’s a painful whine emitting from this area, making his teeth ache. Seeing the way Joyce rubs at her jaw, he’s sure he’s not the only one. Her hair is standing on end more than usual, too. It’s almost a comedic sight.
“Think they’ll be happy about us smashing up their radio tower?” he asks, craning his head backwards and looking up.
“Not one bit,” Joyce says brightly, grinning.
In the end, all it takes is a crowbar: he smashes it into the control panel at the top of the tower, just hits and hits and hits until sparks fly and the metal dents and that subsonic hum finally recedes, leaving only blessed silence.
Most importantly: the cashier at the bookstore remembers them when Joyce stops in to pick up a copy of The Silmarillion for Will. She hears Hopper exhale in relief behind her once the woman starts chattering away, asking if they’ve enjoyed their day in Laurel so far. (It’s actually been several days by now. The townspeople weren’t counting.)
“Wanna celebrate?” she asks, as soon as they’ve stepped outside into the crisp late-afternoon air.
“Hey, Joyce.” He’s staring into his drink. But it’s different this time; tonight he’s nursing his single beer with the occasional sip, moreso just to have something to do with his hands and mouth. It’s social, rather than his usual unrelenting determination: downing one after another after another, drinking them as if he’s got a quota to get through, as if he won’t find any rest until he reaches the bottom of the bottle and he can sleep. As they sit on these stools beside each other, Hop paces himself. Her thigh is touching his. They’re both aware of this.
“D’you remember high school?” he asks. “Before Lonnie?”
Reflexively, Joyce’s skin prickles at her ex’s name—it summons up so many memories, good and bad and mostly bad—but with a concerted effort, she thinks back. Further. Before she’d taken up with the hooligan who traded her cigarettes out of the detention window, back to…
“Oh, lord. You mean us?” Her cheeks are heating with a blush. She didn’t expect that. “Sure, Hop, I remember.”
“Call me Jim.”
Her smile broadens. “Sure, Jim. What about it?”
Hop’s mouth opens, about to say something, but then he bites down on whatever it was. He takes another sip of his beer instead.
Walking back to their motel room together, Joyce is weaving slightly. Whereas Hop is still walking steady and his hand rests on the small of her back, steadying her. She instinctively leans into the touch; taking more support than she actually needs, really.
As he’s unlocking the door, swiping the hat from his head and tossing it to the chair, she realises that they’re heading back to Hawkins soon. And this trip—this vacation—will be over, and it’ll be back to being a mother, to shifts at the general store, to overtime and reheating dinner for the boys, to staring at the clock when Will’s on his way home from the Wheelers, to jolting every time the phone rings, to pacing when they’re both out. And that loneliness.
And he’ll be back to his quiet house and the rows of empty bottles like soldiers.
Hop strolls through the room and into the bathroom, while Joyce settles herself primly on the edge of the motel bed, her hands folded neatly in her lap. The bathroom door is closed and the sink is running.
But does it have to be that way? she wonders.
When the door clicks open, she pops back to her feet. “Gotta hit the hay, I guess,” he says, “we’ve got an early—”
But as he walks past her, Joyce’s hand seizes on his wrist (brushing against the blue bracelet, the one she hasn’t asked about) and stops the man in his tracks.
“Jim,” she says, “get down here.”
“What?”
With a tug at his collar, she drags him close enough to kiss him.
She thought it might remind her of high school, him and her and them, but he doesn’t feel at all like he did when they were teenagers. She should have expected it. His coarsely-grown stubble, the slight sag to his belly; he’s softer than the high school footballer she remembers, but he’s still so annoyingly tall, though, and doesn’t give an inch when she pushes against his chest.
“Joyce, are you sure?” Hop usually never hesitates with women, but he’s stricken now, arms stiff at his sides as if he’s not sure what to do with his hands for once.
“Of course I’m sure.” She knows exactly what she wants. Always has.
And here’s the thing.
He doesn’t treat her like she’s fragile. Doesn’t handle the nervous, anxious single mother with kid gloves. No, Jim Hopper is still tall and strong and he manages to pick her up, hefting her into his arms as he takes a step backwards and falls back onto the bed with Joyce in his lap, giddy like a teenager again—and this part is just like it was when they were stealing kisses behind the bleachers.
His shirt smells like stale cigarette smoke, which should be terrible but isn’t really.
Jim skims her shapeless sweater off her head, and the expression on his face is worth all of this: eyes softening in awe at each exposed inch of pale skin, pressing a kiss to her neck, her collarbone, and down, down.
Eventually the man flips their positions on the motel bed for better access, making his way across her body, fingers dragging jeans down over her hips, his stubble raw against her thighs. Before too long, she’s gasping his name.
It’s a bright spring morning, and he’s warming his hands around another styrofoam cup of diner coffee. If they needed any further confirmation that the strange loop’s been broken, Richie’s greeting today sealed the deal (“You sleep alright? I know the beds over at the Camelot ain’t the best”).
But Hop’s looking squirmy and uncomfortable in his skin, unsure what to say to her or how to behave—normally he’s long-gone by now, phone numbers crumpled and thrown in the bin, and he never calls the women again—but this morning there’s no escaping it. He’s standing next to the car, nursing that coffee.
He’s such a beast of a man. Lonnie was shorter, scrawnier, leaner; more ferret than bear.
“Ready to go?” he asks gruffly. Joyce can already see that barrier bricking up between them, his eyes drifting to the middle distance, over her shoulder.
She’ll be damned if she lets him.
She would’ve been pissed if she didn’t understand it, understand him, so well. She’s hardly dated since Lonnie either, shutting off that part of herself. Joyce Byers has poured herself into being a mother, into providing, into existing on the bare minimum. But ever since Will’s disappearance, since the Upside-Down, she’s also felt more alive than ever. More aware than ever.
I deserve more, Joyce tells herself, and is surprised at how true it feels. It’s the first time she’s ever told herself anything like that since Lonnie. And looking at this rough, broken man, she knows he’s better than he thinks he is, too.
“Hop,” she says, just to snap his attention back to her, and then: “Jim.”
“Yeah?”
“If you regret—”
A flicker of surprise in his eyes. “Jesus, no. Of course not. That’s not…”
“Then please do me the courtesy of not ignoring me today, or getting all strange about it. We’re friends, aren’t we? That doesn’t change.”
The man looks down at her, contemplatively. Some sort of calculation is ticking over in his eyes, his head. For all that he was a jock in high school and for all that he solves problems with his impulsive right hook, he’s also a quick study and quicker thinker, jotting the pieces together. It made him a pretty good detective in the big city.
And then he sets the cup aside on the roof as he steps closer, his lips catching hers again, pressing her against the side of the car. There’s cold metal behind her, his warm body in front; her hand catches the hook of his waistband just to have something to hang onto, then slips under the edge of his loose flannel. Warm skin, her cool hands, his own steadying on her hips, and Jim kisses her not like an overeager teenager but slowly, thoughtfully, and Joyce reciprocates with force. She nips at his bottom lip.
He tastes like coffee.
“I kept waiting for you to do something after you fixed the wall last year,” Joyce says softly after they finally break apart, looking at his collarbone, the untidy open neck of his shirt. He laughs, and she can feel it reverberating through his barrel chest, under her hand.
“Me? You’ve gotta be kidding me. You had enough on your plate, and I’m… well. I didn’t want to impose.”
“Don’t be silly,” she chides, tugging at his waistband again, just to keep him close. And Jim Hopper laughs again, and she decides that she quite likes the sound.
They drive back to Hawkins.
Hop’s entire body tenses as they pass the NOW LEAVING LAUREL sign, but both of them let out a collective breath as the signs shift, as they get back on the highway, as they leave the town behind.
Part of him worried they might settle back into the old holding pattern as soon as they got back to their own hometown, but then Joyce’s hand settles over Jim’s on the gearstick; he glances over, their eyes meet, and he quirks a smile. She squeezes his hand slightly, fingers curling over his knuckles.
He could get used to this.