They hadn't been able to see each other, like really see each other, in over 2 weeks due to work schedules. So when the front door slammed shut with the last kid leaving the Byers' house that summer morning, they were like two magnets.
Hopper kissed Joyce with intensity, and she slid her hands between them to unbutton his pants with record speed. Her shorts and underwear were discarded, and he picked her up, pinning her up against the wall, not even caring to make it to her bedroom. Hopper didn't even bother taking off any of his own clothes; he was already as exposed as he needed to be, and they couldn't wait any longer. Joyce wrapped her legs tightly around him, and the two were so involved in just a matter of minutes that they missed the sound of the front door opening and closing.
That is until they heard her.
"Are you okay?" El questioned, staring at the scene in front of her, not knowing any better.
"Je-sus," Hopper exclaimed in surprise, letting go of Joyce so she could stand on the ground. Hopper didn't turn around, blocking their nudity, but El could tell that something was wrong from the look on Joyce's face.
"Is everything okay?" she repeated, locking eyes with Joyce, expressing her concern.
"Yes, sweetie. Why don't you go back outside for a minute," Joyce finally instructed when she could catch her breath enough to form a complete sentence.
El squinted at the two of them for a second before turning around and walking out to the front porch. She sat down in one of the wicker chairs but listened intently for any hint of those sounds again, ready to use her powers against Hopper if she had to.
"Shit," Hooper swore, buttoning up the front of his pants. Nothing could kill the mood faster than being caught by your kid.
Joyce couldn't help but laugh, as she pulled on her underwear and shorts. "Looks like she forgot her bag," she told him, pointing to the bag that rested on the floor next to where El had been standing.
"Of course she did," he groaned, running his hand through his hair before he started pacing the floor.
"Do you want me to talk to her?" Joyce asked, sensing the obvious look of dread on Jim's face.
"Will you," he all but begged.
"Does she know about sex?" Joyce asked him, touching his arm to slow down his anxious pacing.
Hopper groaned again. He didn't like thinking about El and sex in the same sentence, let alone having to talk about it out loud. "I don't know. I mean, I guess she does. She's watched enough soap operas last year, so yeah, probably," he finally decided out loud.
"You let her watch soap operas?" Joyce scowled.
"The kid was bored all day while I was gone," he reasoned, knowing debating about soap operas was the least of his concerns right now.
Joyce wasn't totally sure how to approach this conversation, but nevertheless, she figured it was probably better her than Hopper.
She gave him one last look of dissatisfaction before she went out to the porch. El immediately jumped up and hugged her.
"Was Hopper hurting you?" she nearly whispered. El didn't want to believe that the man she thought of as her father could ever hurt Joyce.
"What sweetie?" Joyce asked, confused. She pulled El back, and they both sat down on the porch bench next to the door.
"It sounded like he was hurting you," El clarified.
"Oh my gosh, no, honey, no. Jim wasn't hurting me," Joyce explained.
The poor sweet girl was just worried about her.
"Oh," El replied. After a minute, "Then what were you doing?" she asked innocently.
Joyce wasn't sure how to proceed from here, so she tried keeping it PG since El obviously didn't catch what was actually going on.
"Well, we were, ah, we just really missed each other, that's all," she explained.
But El wasn't buying that. She'd seen them kiss each other before, but they weren't really even kissing this time. And she definitely never heard them making noises like that before.
Joyce could see that El wasn't pleased with that explanation.
"Alright, Hun, I suppose you are mature enough to hear it. We were…making love," she told her. "We didn't realize anyone had walked in. And I'm sorry you ended up seeing that," Joyce apologized.
"Is that sex?"
El pronounced 'sex' softly because she knew it was a bad word. None of her friends would even explain exactly what it was, other the fact that they also called it 'doing it.' Mike's cheeks would grow pink every time someone mentioned it, and he would only tell her it was how babies were made before trying to change the subject.
"Ah, yeah… Yes. We were having sex," Joyce told her.
"Are you going to have a baby?" El asked, and her eyes lit up excitedly.
"No, sweetie. I'm not going to have a baby," Joyce answered, trying to let her down gently.
El was confused again. "I thought people do sex to have babies?"
"Well, yes, they do. But that's not always why."
"Then why do you and Hopper do sex?"
Joyce paused for a moment before answering honestly. "Grownups who love each other have sex because it feels good," she explained simply.
But something didn't add up for El. "I thought you had to be naked and in bed to do sex?" she questioned. It was a reasonable assumption for a kid who had only ever saw sex on television.
"Ah, no not always," Joyce answered carefully.
And then El looked up at Joyce with a very panicked look on her face.
"What is it sweetie?" Joyce finally asked when El didn't elaborate.
"I think me and Mike did sex," she finally confessed, almost whispering.
"You what?"
"We were kissing, a lot," she explained, looking down to her fidgeting hands in her lap. "And I started feeling really funny. Like it felt very good between my legs when I was moving around on Mike, but then he got up and said that we should probably stop doing that...at least until we were older," El quickly detailed to the woman that she trusted as a mother. "Was that sex?" she asked with wide eyes.
Joyce was suddenly very glad Hopper was not a part of this conversation; El would surely never be allowed to be alone with that kid ever again if he had heard this.
"No, that wasn't sex, but Mike was right that you should maybe stop kissing like that until you two are a little older," she agreed, pleased that a fourteen-year-old boy would have enough self-control to stop something like that from happening.
"Then what is sex?" El asked, thoroughly confused by this entire conversation. She now knew you don't always have babies when you have sex, and you can do sex with your clothes on and it feels good, but when her and Mike felt good with their clothes on, it wasn't called sex; it was all suddenly very confusing.
There were moments like these that reminded Joyce of how truly sheltered El has been. When her and Hopper were 14, they had friends who were having sex, and El didn't even understand the mechanics of it.
Joyce felt a sudden responsibility as a woman to teach her, so she changed how she approached the conversation. After all, El was certainly old enough; she deserved to know, though she was sure that Hopper probably felt that keeping sex a secret from her until she was 30 would be a fine enough idea.
"Sex when a man puts his penis in a woman's vagina," Joyce explained to her.
El made a face. "And it doesn't hurt?"
"No, it shouldn't hurt. It should be with someone you love and trust, and it should feel good."
"And that's what you and Hopper were doing?"
"Yes. That's what we were doing," Joyce admitted.
"EL!" they both hear the boys shouting from the end of the path. They had all come back to see what was taking her so long.
"Coming!" El yelled back to them.
But then El realized something that Joyce had said. "You love him?"
"Yes, sweetie. I love him." Joyce smiled, and El smiled back, taking off of the porch to find the boys, abruptly ending the conversation without another thought.
"You forgot your bag!" Joyce shouted after her, laughing.
"Oh right!" El exclaimed running back up the porch stairs.
She swung open the front door and ran up behind Hopper, wrapping her arms around him, hugging him from behind. "I'm sorry I interrupted your sex with Joyce," she apologized sweetly. She grabbed her bag and ran for the door before he could even put two words together. "Bye!" she shouted. And then she was out the front door as if nothing ever happened.
Though sex was still sort of confusing for El, and she would definitely have more questions for Joyce later, right now, she was just elated to know for sure that Hopper and Joyce were in love.
Hopper was sitting at the kitchen table, his head in his hands, when Joyce came up behind him and wrapped her arms around his shoulders, kissing his cheek.
"My kid just apologized for interrupting our sex," he groaned.
Joyce giggled, kissing him again and hugging her arms a little tighter around him.
And then she decided to say the words that they have both been too scared to say to each other, despite being officially together for a while now.
"I love you," Joyce confessed quietly.
Hopper turned around and pulled her down to his lap. "I love you too," he whispered back, pressing his forehead to hers.