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Sunday 21st July, 1984
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That morning when he heard his bedroom door being knocked on, bright and early, Lucas groaned and turned over in bed, away from the doorway his little sister peeked through.
"What is it Jamie?" he eventually asked, grumbling as he sat up. "Mom says get up, we got church soon." With that she left her brother to clamber out of bed and immediately start tidying it before setting out his church suit.
Four hours later he could taste freedom, running from the chapel entrance and straight to his bike that he'd convinced his mom to bring in the back of the car.
"Lucas!" said mother called, reaching the boot and helping him tug it out. "I wan't you back home tonight for dinner okay? Don't stay at Mike's too long."
"Okay mom." Lucas waved off his mother and screwed his face up at his little sister and her church friends before taking off in the noon light.
"Any 6's?" "No" "No" Nope" "You're all meant to say, go fish."
Dustin rolled his eyes and picked up a card, before immediately dropping his hand with a sigh. "This blows, let's watch a movie until he gets here."
"DVD player's broken and Dad's watching his golf." Mike replied, handing over the queen El had just asked for. "And it won't be much longer." Will added, "can we play monopoly instead?"
"What is monopoly?" "No!" "Absolutely not."
"I'll explain it to you later, and why we'll never play for the sake of our friendship." Mike said to El, who smiled back unknowingly. "Well then, I guess we just-"
Careful but deliberately loud footsteps came downstairs and they all cheered as Lucas arrived with his signature smug look. "Yes yes I know, you missed me."
"Now we can start playing for real!" Dustin swept the cards off the table to land in a messy pile in the toy box while Will set up the board and pieces and Mike tended to his DM corner. "Yeah, but I'm only here for six hours." Lucas warned, still grinning though because despite how they'd done the same almost every other weekend, he was still surprised they waited for him.
...
"You can't have her today."
Jim glared the men down while they stared back at him blankly through dark shades. "We were told by Brenner that she needed to-"
"She doesn't need to do anything. Come back on Wednesday like we agreed." His dismissive wave before slamming his home door shut left the two men standing on the porch, awkwardly. It was almost noon now, unusual that they'd come during this time. Hopper shook his head, lighting a cigarette and peeking through the curtains to see if they were still across the road from his lot.
They were. Hopper decided he needed to leave the house. Being off work for the weekend hadn't been his idea, but Flo's.
A pack of cigarettes tucked into his flannel and several curse words later found him out the back door and on his way to god knows where, shimmied through the fence on the other side of the lot and heading into the woods. The unmarked car was a distant thought that drifted away in the slight breeze that picked up across his face as he trotted along, smoking up a storm.
In just under a half hour, he made it to the familiar patch of dry grass that was the Byers yard. The house itself was very quiet, not unexpected when he knew Will would be at the Wheelers with Eleven and Jonathan's car was gone, probably with the Wheeler girl.
When Joyce heard the knocks from outside she wasn't expecting to find him, of all people, at her front door. "Jim? I... did you need something?"
She ushered the man inside, tugging her pyjama flannel down and immediately leaving to get a robe while he made himself comfortable at the dining room table with a freshly lit cigarette. "No. I just needed to... get away."
"Away from what? Aren't you on holiday right now?" she asked incredulously, returned with a few more layers and her hair not so all over the place.
"The feds. They're outside my house as we speak."
Dark expressions met eachother, blue eyes on brown clashing as she took the offered cig and drew in a deep puff that burned her throat deliciously. "She's with the boys. Do I need to warn Karen?"
"You know they won't go after her directly." Jim bought his hand out to take his cigarette back when she pulled out her own, lighter ready and waiting in her front pocket. "I've just about had it with them, Hop."
"Me too, Joyce." This time as his eyes raised to meet hers, he caught something else behind those smoldering depths. Something he didn't think he'd ever see again in his lifetime. "Hey, Hop?"
"Yeah?"
"Do you ever regret what happened back then? In highschool."
Another long pause. She was asking him a question he couldn't really answer, one he didn't actually know the answer to. "Regret... us?" he asked, for clarificatiom.
"Do you ever wish I'd chosen to stay in Hawkins, with you. Instead of dropping out and running off with Lon."
Blue eyes widened in surprise while hers dropped intensely. "In another world, my kids could have been yours too, your daughter mine..."
"Cut the bullshit Joyce!"
Hopper stood up angrily and headed for the front door again, only stopping when he felt the small but rough hands brush his neck and shoulder. "I'm sorry, I don't know where that came from..."
He turned back to find her with shining eyes, guilty expression pleading with him for forgiveness. "Don't go yet."
"Don't talk about her again. Our kids, they... don't dwell, on the past." he asked, begged her to change the subject as she led him back to the table with a cup of black coffee and immediately started up about El's schooling, her love of flowers and eggo waffles and pretty dresses and solving puzzles.
Lucas wasn't sure when their group dynamic had really started shifting so dramatically, but apparently he'd been the last to notice that two of his friends were now an unspoken pair, their bond made of a different kind of material than what he, Mike and the other boys shared.
Mike and El. El and Mike. They were two of a kind, they talked quietly together more than anyone else did and seemed to never stop staring into eachother's eyes. It was gross, absolutely disgusting... but maybe he wouldn't mind, if his girlfriend beat up bullies for him, and played a badass elf character in dungeons and dragons with him.
And held his hand when a toy clown appeared onscreen as they were currently watching Poltergeist. The campaign was finished in four hours, leaving 2 to spare for them to watch a movie before he had to go home. They were in the living room together, Mike's dad having moved to the garage to do whatever dads did, tinkering with grown up versions of their toys and gadgets.
Mike was deathly afraid of clowns, he and Will found out when his parents hired one for his 7th birthday and it apparently traumatised him. He'd yet to admit it out loud, but Lucas knew that in 4th grade when they first befriended Dustin, Mike was the least inclined to hang out with the newer kid because of his fluffy curls and huge grin.
Lucas himself was afraid of werewolves, and had collected enough silver things in random places in his room (coins, a belt buckle, random buttons and pins and a medal of his dads from 'nam) that he'd be well prepared for a werewolf attack. Dustin feared zombies, to the point where he had a whole plan laid out in blueprints tucked safely in his wardrobe should the zombie apocalypse ever really occur.
And Will was most afraid of alien monsters, a fear only heightened by what happened last year. Actually, they were all afraid of monsters in general now. With the exception of Mike though, none of their fears were so ridiculous Lucas thought with a quiet chuckle as he watched a concerned El quell the boy seemingly glued to her arm.
"He's gone now Mike." Lucas stated with a cheshire grin, watching the pale boy peek out from behind his own hands and El's shoulder just as the clown doll wrapped its arm around Robbie's neck and pulled him under the bed. The boy yelled out and ducked back down again amidst more laughing. "Screw you Lucas! You're never picking the movie again."
"Aaah come on Mike, don't be such a baby." Dustin sided with Lucas, chuckling as well as stuffing his face with popcorn and candy. "I'm not being a baby! The fact that no-one else here finds that creepy is actually a real concern to me."
"Meh, the clown is just a toy inhabited by an evil spirit." Dustin stated, shrugging. Mike shook his head in disbelief, wondering how that possibly supported his argument that the clown doll wasn't so bad.
Beside Dustin on the two-seater, Will had fallen asleep and was curled up with his head on the armrest, having already seen the movie with his mom and brother last year. He'd only told them about the clown doll before it started, without easing Mike's worries of jump-scares by telling him where exactly it showed up. Mike, Lucas and El were on the three-man chair.
"Can we watch something else instead guys?" Mike asked, as the ground on screen turned into a graveyard of the undead and it was Dustin's turn to gulp audibly. "Hell no! It's almost finished dude." Lucas insisted, just as the phone started ringing and everyone turned towards it.
Mike left to answer, talking for a little while with a respectful tone before turning to the friend he liked least at the moment. "It's your mom, she says go home now."
Groaning, Lucas got up to talk to her as well. "Fine, stop the tape there for later. You win this time, Wheeler."
As they all prepared to go home, for Will and El wanted to make the trip before darkness came and Dustin didn't see the point of just him being there when he could go to his own family, Lucas watched from the corner of his eye as Mike stopped El from riding off with Will and they talked quietly by the brick wall. He'd just about rounded the corner when he saw them quickly kiss, and it made his face screw up in even more disgust.
"You look like you just saw a face sucker in action dude." Dustin stated off-handedly, eyeing the boy with a raised eyebrow. "Two, actually. Don't ask." Lucas replied, hiding his face as the couple rounded the corner, both faces bright red and grinning.
The two Byers kids weren't strangers to seeing their older brother with Nancy, looking happier than he ever had been his life (according to Will). What they were strangers to, though, was seeing them making outside the house through foggy car windows. Both Will and El screwed their faces up. "Hey Jonathan!"
Said boy gasped and threw himself away from the girl, who turned towards the now grinning kids with a deer in the headlights expression. "Will! El! Umm..."
"Um." "Hi Nancy."
"Hey El!" Nancy grinned back at the half-smiling girl with sparkles in her eyes. "What were you doing?" the younger girl asked curiously, causing her pseudo older sister to blanch.
"We were... we were-" her stutter was cut off suddenly as Jonathan interrupted.
"We were saying goodbye. Nancy has to go home, and you two need to get inside. Now, go!" He shoved his arm towards the house, as seriously as he could be when it came to the kids his heart usually melted over.
Will rolled his eyes, pushing the bike and El forward with him. "Whatever, we're not 6 dude we know what you were really doing."
...
"Do you think they're in love? Over."
"What a stupid question! Over."
Lucas rolled his eyes, staring up at the ceiling of his bedroom and tossing his ratty old baseball high enough to tap the ceiling while his supercomm lay next to his head.
"Oh come on! It's a legit concern, their relationship affects the party dynamic right? Over."
Dustin paused from organising the trading cards in their designated box, waiting for the silence on the other end of the line to cease and his friend's voice to begin.
"I guess... you're kinda right. But you sound like a dumb girl who gossips too much. Over."
"I don't! I don't care about anyone's relationship outside of us. Over. And speaking of, aren't you and Max a thing now?"
"What the hell are you talking about?" Lucas asked quickly, scrambling to sit up, outraged at the matter of fact tone of Dustin's voice. "Who thinks we're a 'thing'?"
"Me and Will." Dustin replied, and Lucas could hear his teasing smirk. "You two are always fighting, and that's what people do sometimes when they like eachother."
"Where did you learn that crap? Have you been reading your mom's trashy women's magazines again?" Lucas asked incredulously, still ignoring the heat in his cheeks and ears. "No, it's just a thing I heard dude."
"Well, stop hearing things 'dude'. Me and... Max, we aren't a thing." Lucas shook his head in denial, wanting to end the conversation quickly.
"Why? Is it coz Max is another 'dumb girl'?" Dustin furthered, now finished sorting his cards and clambering into his own bed. "Hell no! She's not dumb!" Lucas inwardly groaned to himself at the vehement expression of denial. "She's okay. Just... no. Over."
"Denial isn't just a river in Egypt~" Dustin sang, making the boy even angrier. "You're an asshole."
"I know, goodnight!" Dustin shut off his supercomm first, leaving the Sinclair boy to stew over the accusations on his own. "We are not a thing... are we?"
They hadn't talked about her at all that day, but she'd come up more than once in the back of the boy's mind. Mostly wondering what she was doing, or thinking that during the movie, no-one would've enjoyed teasing Mike alongside him more than her.
He didn't think that all girls were stupid, or a waste of time. At the forefront on the list of girls not stupid was his mom, who as a doctor did the most badass thing saving people's lives everyday, in his eyes. Next was El, total, absolute badass. Nancy had been a dumb girl for a while, when she'd been dating the douchebag Steve Harrington. Now she was cool.
And Max was high up on the list of girls that weren't dumb. And she was the kind of girl who'd beat up bullies for him, and played a badass half-orc warrior in dungeons and dragons, and maybe it wouldn't be so bad if he could hold her hand that was usually curled up in a fist, ready to punch his arm or knock some sense into Troy.
Lucas didn't think he'd mind too much at all, finding h
imself more than a little excited at the prospect of school and her face showing up tomorrow.
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Tuesday 23rd July, 2014
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He hadn't expected this, coming from the two teenagers he thought had somehow managed to keep themselves out of trouble in the last few months. How wrong, yet right, Hopper was...
"And this is the entrance, we couldn't reach it because they had cameras going everywhere." Nancy said, pointing towards the slightly raised patch of corn maize in the photo. "Does it seem right to you?"
He still couldn't believe it. Couldn't believe the fact that these kids, so close to being adults with adult responsibilities... but still, just kids. These kids had somehow started and completed their own investigation on Hawkins Light and Energy, gathered photographic (and some bagged sample) evidence of the old lab, pinpointed the location of the new lab and detected its cover and security measures, and taken photos of the comings and goings of the new lab all while remaining undercover.
"Are you two planning to get into investigative journalism?" he asked in reply to her concerns, which both she and Jonathan smiled at.
"It's... not out of the cards." the teenaged boy replied, sorting out the photos into their seperate folders based on the date they were taken in the last two weeks. 'I can't decide whether or not to strangle them for being so reckless or to recruit them...' he thought, still shaking his head as he looked over the evidence some more.
"This... this is really, something." The reply sounded less than negative to the teenagers, who were now frowning at eachother. "Is it any good? If we send it out to the media, they could blow this wide open!" Jonathan exclaimed.
"But for now, leverage right?" Nancy threw out, "in case they get too testy, with El."
Hopper simply nodded, still too stunned at seeing what mere teenagers had been able to accomplish, independently, to help the girl. When all he'd done was sit by idly and watch her get taken to experiment after fucking experiment.
Later, with the kids gone home, he reflected on the intrusive guilt he felt in his heart at failing yet another daughter. She had no one in her life to turn to, a new Papa. But she needed one, and he was more than willing to take his place. Maybe he shouldn't have dismissed Joyce's notion of El being theirs. Uncertainly would they come together for the young people's game of finding love in eachother, but for El... Hopper thought he could risk trying his hand with the crazy kind of passion that was Joyce Byers, just one more time.
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Author's notes:
It's been a little while. Hi!
Tried to be Lucas and Hopper centric here. I'm honestly not too happy with the chapter as is so it may change later, add some things, change the pace of others. Have a second update as well :)
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