This is from the 52 weeks with a 52 different themes that I meant to start earlier in the year for my different otps but never got around to. So the first theme for the first week is: a story about a "New Beginning"
Getting There
Three years after he signed the adoption papers for Jane 'El' Hopper, he never imagined he would be where he was now – in the house he grew up in as a child down by the cul-de-sac with a teenage girl whose entire life he was now responsible for.
Hopper had of course planned to move the kid out of the cabin once it was deemed safe. He would move them to his parent's old house since it was his anyway. He wanted a life for her and the childhood she never thought she could have. He wanted her to be able to go to school, to worry about homework and projects and to hang out with some friends on weekend.
That happened about six months after she closed the gate. It was safe for her so he moved them both out of the woods. He enrolled her in the school after asking her again and again to make sure it was not all too much for her. They could do it slowly, take one step at a time but those six months of Joyce's homeschooling had made her eager to be in a classroom with other children. Hopper took her with him whenever he had errands to run. He brought her to the diner for breakfast and to where Joyce work just so the people in Hawkins would get used to seeing her with him. He also wanted her to get used to actually being out in public without having the need to hide.
The boys showed all the little nooks and crannies in Hawkins, introduced her the alternative short cut routes, told her where to get the best ice cream from and what kind of people to avoid – mainly Max's brother, a point Lucas constantly liked to stress to her.
On his off days, Hopper taught his kid how to cycle before he eventually bought her a bicycle of her own to get around with Max and the boys. He gave her some money to spend at the arcade and for herself.
Slowly, it started to shape out to be a normal life – just a single father with his teenage daughter – and for the first time after a long time, Hopper realised he was contented.
It didn't mean he wanted to spend every waking moment with his kid, though. There were times when he craved to be alone, sometimes to remember Sara by but he never allowed himself to wallow too long in the sadness and sometimes just to catch his breath because El could be a handful. It meant that there was the usual hang out at the Wheeler's place and sleepover at the Byers.
The fact that Will and El formed a closed relationship and bonded over their trauma in the Upside Down shouldn't have surprised him but it did.
Not that it was something to complain about since the closer they got, the closer he got to Joyce.
Even before he moved from the cabin to the better part of town where his parents' house was located, Joyce had often come by his place mostly to check on El who looked up at her as a sort of maternal figure. Hopper let it since there were some things and some questions she had that only Joyce could answer and help her through with.
When Joyce wasn't too busy with her sons and El, she made time for him. When Will and El ran off to one of their rooms to do whatever it was they did, Joyce and him would ended up alone together. It gave them a lot of opportunity and time to be with each other. He should have seen it coming but he was blindsided by how something old and dormant and hungry rekindled between them.
The first time they got together had been a clash of teeth and urgent hands roaming the skin under the shirts. The first time they got together, she had sighed in his ear as if having him finally inside of her made her feel at ease. They first time they got together, he had almost lost control and she had laughed delightfully by how much he seemed to desire her.
She wasn't wrong. He desired everything about her. She was fiery and protective yet soft and kind. Joyce looked nothing like the sixteen year old girl he had gotten together with in his youth but this Joyce with her experience and her wisdom and the strength from what she had endured was someone he would fight for everyday of his life.
At night, sometimes when his thoughts kept him awake, he would wonder what it would have been like for them if Will had not gone missing and if they had not gone through the things they went through together in search of him. Their messy past and the bitter separation in their senior year of high school would have ensured that they walk different paths.
He knew that was what would have happen.
When he returned to Hawkins in '75 after Sara's death, it was always just the occasional civil hello and goodbye whenever they crossed paths. That changed until '83 when the Upside Down put them in each other's lives again.
"Hey," Hopper greeted, poking his head into the kitchen to see that Joyce was there.
Nothing beat coming home from work to find her at his place.
"Hey yourself," she smiled back at him.
She was still in her work uniform which meant she must have come here straight after her shift. His eyes travelled towards the stove to find some leftover mac and cheese, something he recalled El had asked for two days ago.
"You made that for her?" he asked, crossing the room to give her a quick peck on the lips.
"I haven't forgotten that she asked for it and I didn't think you'd be whipping up some mac and cheese with your double shifts. Yeah, Hop, I heard about the double shifts."
"Bet it was Flo," he rolled his eyes. "So you're here… You staying the night?"
He tried not to sound too hopeful but Will's bicycle was parked outside his house which meant her son was here, as well, likely up in El's room doing homework, he hoped.
Joyce's reaction wasn't the reaction he was hoping for. She winced and looked away, stepping back from him to put the clean dishes away. He liked that she was so familiar with his kitchen and the rest of his house, as if she belonged there.
"Jane is a little angry with me. I don't think she'd want me around."
"That's not her decision to make. It's my house, my rules so I call the shots," he muttered. "What happened, Joyce?"
"Well, I told her she has to clean up after herself – wash her dirty plates and dry them instead of leaving them out in the sink. It was time for her soap on TV so she said she would do it later. I – I told her she had to get to it immediately. She wasn't happy."
He sighed. "She threw a tantrum?"
"Oh, no," Joyce was quick to shake her head. Throwing a tantrum often meant having an object telekinetically flying through the room, something Hopper forbade. "Just your normal teenage defiance – slamming the door."
"I'll talk to her," he assured, running his hand up and down her arm soothingly. "Stay the night, come on. Will's here anyway."
He wanted her to stay the night every night but short of proposing marriage, he had no idea how to actually ask her to move in. There was a room Will already occupied whenever the Byers slept over just as El has a room in the Byers place for when she spent the night there. Hell, Will's room in Hopper's house was equipped with a bunk bed for when Jonathan visit from college.
It would be easier for them to just stay. This constant driving back and forth between his place and hers was fine at first but he wanted more. He wanted them all together.
El was Joyce's as much as he considered Will and Jonathan a part of his. The years had pushed them together and they were a unit now. Everyone in town knew, even Lonnie who made a big deal out of it when he first found out.
This was the beginning he never thought he could ever find after Sara's death and his eventual divorce but here he was. It was ironic how he thought moving back to Hawkins was the final low blow in his life but it was in Hawkins that he managed to turn it around.
All those years he spent alone in a blurry haze of alcohol and cigarette, it never ever crossed his mind that he would have a daughter again but he has that and more. He wasn't expecting to start anything with Joyce again or even thought they could but they did, and by God, this time, he would never let her go.
"Talk to her first," Joyce laughed, pushing him out of the kitchen.
"The girl needs to learn to listen to her mother – it'll save me the trouble," he grumbled.
To her credit, Joyce had stopped tensing whenever she heard that word coming from him.
New beginnings, he mused to himself as he made his way up to El's room to deal with a little teenage angst.
He would deal with this any day if it meant he could keep all these people in his life.