Disclaimer: Stranger Things is the intellectual property of Netflix and the Duffer Brothers, and is are being used in this fanfiction for fan purposes only. No infringement or disrespect of the copyright holders of Stranger Things is intended by this fanfiction.
Description: Joyce Byers knows full well that the police chief of the small town of Hawkins, Indiana has dealt with enough monsters and other weird shit to last him the rest of his life… but she has a feeling that the world is ten times scarier now that he has a daughter to raise.
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Blue
by silverr
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Joyce saw Hopper lurking by the magazine rack, studying it as if it was a crime scene, but she knew he was only waiting for Mrs. Polisky to finish counting out her pennies. Week after week, the old lady's denture powder and foot cream and canned tuna were paid for with nothing but pennies. It was a recurring topic of discussion, the source of her seemingly endless supply: the general opinion was that she had piles in her basement, heaped up like coal next to her Mason jars of corn relish and pickled watermelon rind.
Unfortunately, by the time Mrs. Polisky left, two high school boys whose names she could never recall had come in and were loitering and whispering in aisle three. Neither of the boys had been in the Halloween video, so as far as Joyce was concerned they'd get the standard Melvald's customer treatment as long as they didn't try to talk her into selling them beer and cigarettes again. She always secretly enjoyed messing with anyone who tried to foist a fake ID on her, but since the boys had seen Hopper glowering in their general direction, they brought only a single bag of corn chips up to the register.
"Takes two of you to carry that to the car?" Hopper asked without looking up.
Joyce pressed her lips together and tried not to laugh.
The shorter of the boys made a "Heh" sound and handed her a dollar as the other boy, taller and greasier, glared at something outside the store window.
"Would you like a bag?" Joyce asked sweetly.
"F—" the greasy boy started to say.
His friend elbowed him. "No, no bag." He added firmly, "Ma'am."
After the boys hurried out, Hopper replaced the magazine he'd been pretending to read. "Finally."
Joyce set a carton of unfiltered Camels on the counter.
Conversations the past few weeks had sometimes been weird, but then why wouldn't they be? The two of them and a handful of kids were the only ones in Hawkins who knew what had really happened. They were the ones who had to chip away at the huge invisible boulder that had crashed into the town and repair the damage it had done before anyone else noticed. Some days Joyce got so tired of it all that she cried herself to sleep longing for the impossible. To have everything magically go back to the way it had been before, happy kids and a simple world with nothing worse in it than silly pumpkin wars and birds attacking hats… was that so much to ask? It was, and she knew it, but at least she had Hopper to talk to about how Will still flinched at the oddest things—at certain sounds, or certain colors of crayons—or about how carefully everyone avoided mentioning Bob's absence. "I wish it was true," she'd always wind up saying to him. "I wish he actually had dumped me and run off to Maine!" Hopper would just nod, and chain-smoke. She had a feeling that he had badgered Owens and the Hawkins Lab mucky-mucks into holding the secret funeral for Bob and the other non-government victims, but she wasn't going to make him admit it. Especially not when, according to Jonathan, Hop had been the one to hold back her hair and pour black coffee into her when she'd gotten stupefyingly drunk afterward.
So yeah, she owed him, big time. All of Hawkins did, whether they knew it or not. "Anything else?"
He stepped up to the counter and pulled his wallet from his back pocket. "Can you break a twenty?"
"Sure."
"Do you have it?" he added nonchalantly.
"Yeah." Joyce took a large paper bag from under the counter.
Hopper looked taken aback. "That's… a lot bigger bag than I was expecting."
"Oh." Joyce glanced around the empty store. Supposedly there was no one listening anymore, but it didn't hurt to be careful. "Well," she said in a near-whisper as she rang up the cigarettes and counted out the change, "Nancy told her mom she was donating some of her old clothes to the rummage sale since most of them would be out of style by the time Holly was big enough to wear them." She bit her lip. "We went through them, and we pulled out one the same size as the pink one from last year, and two more the next two sizes up. And there's a pair of low heels, black, almost new. We checked the size against the outline you gave me, and we're pretty sure with a little tissue in the toes they'll fit. And there's some makeup, of course. Pink eyeshadow, Bonnie Bell clear gloss. A travel-size Dippity-do." She hesitated, then thought, what the hell. "I tossed a training bra in there too. And a feminine products starter kit. Just in case."
Hopper gave an exasperated grumble and stared off into the empty air to his left.
At first she thought he was pissed she'd spent money he hadn't asked her to spend, or was worried that everyone in Hawkins would get suspicious because she didn't have girls, but the sight of the blue ribbon around his wrist made her realize that, since he'd never had the chance to be an embarrassed dad on Sara's behalf, the responsibility of raising Jane on his own must be hitting him like a ton of bricks. "Don't worry, Hop," she said. "I was really careful. I bought the bra on sale in Edsville, and I didn't see anyone I knew. And if you want I can come by sometime soon and talk to her about… womanly things." She unrolled the top of the bag. "Do you want to look the stuff over?"
He gave a half-shrug, grimaced a little and rubbed his beard. "I'm sure it's fine."
"Are you sure?" Joyce made a sweeping motion across her cheeks. "Does she know how to—"
"She'll be fine," Hopper said, picking up his change as though each coin weighed 50 pounds. "I watched Diane put on makeup every day for years. I know what goes where."
It occurred to Joyce that Hopper had probably seen plenty of other women put on their faces as well, but that wasn't something that needed to be pointed out at the moment. She nodded and, just in case anyone was watching, put the carton of Camels into the bag. "Okay then, I guess you're good!"
Hopper zipped up his jacket, then picked up the bag. "Thanks." He looked as if he was on the verge of asking her something more, but he didn't.
"Call if you need anything!" she said as he turned and headed for the door.
He stopped. "What color are they?" he asked, without turning around.
"Blue," Joyce said. "All three are blue."
"Good," he said, and then he resettled his hat more firmly against the wind, opened the door, and went out into the gleaming December morning.
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~ The End ~
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First post 19 Nov 2017
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Thank you to Bryn for beta, and to /r/StrangerThings/ for leading me to my inspiration. David Harbour, the actor who plays Hopper, has a headcanon that Hopper helped Jane get ready for the Snow Ball. Folks from the makeup department have tweeted that Eleven did her own makeup (with products supplied by Nancy). I don't feel there's any reason why iboth/i of these things can't be true. With Jonathan dating Nancy at the end of S2, it seemed reasonable to me that clothes and makeup could surreptitiously be passed along from Nancy to Jonathan to Joyce to Hopper… and that's how this little story was born.