There are flashbacks, there are adult love scenes, vague mentions of Vietnam and Parental Emotional abuse
*
Hawkins, September 1954
Young Jimmy Hopper stormed out of his house and into the pouring rain, his quiff was looking rather pathetic being as sodden as it was. His Chinos were already darkened by the many, many droplets of water, he didn't care.
Whoever the hell he left ranting and raving in his kitchen was not his father. His father's soul remained on a bridge in Belgium and would stay there up to the present day.
Jimmy's Father, Stephen was a photograph for the longest time, like so many thousands of Hopper's fellow war babies. He liked the fuss of his mother, he liked the echo of the radio news reels, he liked Glenn Miller and even in 1986 it reminded him of her.
Then bang, crash, wallop, Sargent Hopper came home and the world entered his first phase into the upside down. The trauma of war and the rage that was never placated
So there he stood in the rain waiting for the Big Yellow to take him to the distraction of school and whatever Jimmy could pretend to be for a while
...Joyce Kaplinsky's friend for instance
She would join him at the street corner, the little princess in pleats and pinafores, his bobbysoxer. She'd sit with him quietly, swinging her legs against their bus seat and on the rarest of occasions when he cried in front of a girl, Joyce would take his hand and his heart with it
"I'll leave here, I'll leave and never come back" The boy would sniffle
"Not without me" Joyce replied with conviction
"I don't need girls slowing me down" He would snap then squirm at the stupidity of showmanship
"Who says I'd want boys to slow me down?" She'd bark
As the bus moved down Main Street, he smiled as he looked outward then started back at the little firecracker with eyes almost bigger than her face.
It took him years to realise he'd always reach for something to say, because those colossal eyes would take his breath away
"Dweeb" Hop smirked
"Dork" Joyce teased
*
Hawkins Bus Terminal, 1965
Seven Years after sharing a cigarette he saw her for the last time as a young man that had the whole horizon ahead of him. In spite of the rumours Hopper couldn't avoid the Draft. But at least his old man proved once and for all that nothing Hop did would ever satisfy
His mother was long gone by then, he couldn't really blame her. He began to feel self conscious and not entirely feasible as a soldier but he went. For the world and the decade was bigger than any of them and he needed to find a place in it.
Joyce's hair was in a beehive she was a black pea coat and white capris, and in aviator shades he found those brown eyes again
"Oh damn, Jimmy - Damn it to hell I'm so sorry" She stammered as she staggered towards him
"I'll be useful somewhere even if it has to be a jungle" The graduate shrugged then the oddest butterflies roiled in his stomach as her mouth trembled a little.
"There's been protests, so much bad in this, Hopper" She shook her head and pleaded very very softly and discreetly
"That's not the done thing, Joyce - you know that" Hop gritted his teeth and the shadow of his father fell where his own silhouette should have been.
"I know but someone should worry about you. All soldiers should be cared and worried about even if said soldier disagrees" She guffaws in nerves and in the levels of empathy his own kin had not shown
"My flight leaves tonight...I hope to God I'll see you and this dump again" Hopper cooed
"Thought you said you wanted to leave?" Joyce grinned
"Don't think I would have had fun without you" He cringed awkwardly then stared so deep into her soul
The station was setting the scene on so many final goodbyes and fractured lives and nobody had a clue who was destined for what.
"Take care of yourself Hop, don't forget us Midwesterners"
"Never" Hop beamed as the emotion trickled over ever so slightly over
Joyce nodded and waved off but in the direction she was headed in, she stumbled a few feet before taking in the visuals
The odd Kelly green dress blues that would never be duplicated after, his shorn hair under his cap. The jacket shrouding around a broad frame but not the bear he would become later on.
Now, years before The Upside Down punctured through the dimensions around them, Joyce was rarely compulsive. The fragility of life became a moment and he deserved the better moment
And so she ran
Into his arms
And kissed him, right on polite and pursed lips
He kissed back but only just, this wasn't love from her and he knew it. In some way it was better, it was a promise however false, that life was worth coming back to.
That she was worth coming back to
"So much to say, too cowardly to say it, whatever happens...Be happy" Hop roared over the Greyhound engines
He left his beating heart with her and Hopper was never the same
But back then? Nothing was
Two Tours later he would revile all factory smells, avoid the news, throw up over Cambodia. He came home but not to Joyce, instead he was received by drugs and alcohol and then a brief marriage where an angel came and went.
Joyce Kaplinsky had his heart, little Sarah had his soul and was buried with it. He was a shell of a man when he saw Joyce with young Jonathan.
A quick smile from Joyce soothed him before he stumbled properly into the Indiana police force in the Summer of 1979
Whatever he had left, he gave to Eleven...
*
Seven years later he was in the tiniest shower cubicle barely acknowledging the water pouring around him.
His aching body buzzed in pain and burns as water cleansed Russia from the American Veteran. He knew it would remain somewhere in his memory for the rest of his life.
"Hop, I just got you back - I'm not losing you to pneumonia" Joyce was tapping at the door and he didn't know for how long for.
He barely registered climbing up the rope ladder to the Good Ship FBI. He had no wisecracks to give anymore, no side eye but then that's what Joyce was for...
"Whatever the hell you're gonna say you're saying in a warm room, with a coffee pot and maybe a lawyer handy" Joyce's voice was deep and raspy, after days of cold air it completely altered.
"Ma'am, this is a matter of national security, surely you know-"
"Surely YOU know SIR that we are in INTERNATIONAL WATERS so you're jurisdiction is a little off"
"Joyce be nice, these are our RESCUERS after all" Murray seethed, as Enzo and himself became a harness for Hopper who was near to collapse from exhaustion
That was an hour ago
"Hop, why does it feel like I'm talking to Jonathan while he's hiding his weed from behind a locked door??"
Joyce stepped back as she heard her bear grumble and meddle with the doorknob. She opened it up to tepid, damn air and a spout raining furiously over Hop's head. She braved the wet as she was still in her duffle coat and turned the tap off.
The weight of water was replaced by the weight of a terrible silence. She made him look at her and his glance was pure Vietnam, the exact same glance. Hollowed out, shattered, almost gone...Almost.
She stroked his face in love, so much love in it's gentleness and perseverance. Joyce began to cry, she cried for him, for them, for their whole cursed generation.
Hopper scrunched up his eyes and cried too, a man's cry was a shamed cry, a struggling, hidden cry. His raised his arms with barely any room to hide away in but she wouldn't let him anyway.
She pawed his face with both hands this time and he took her right palm and kissed into it, openly crying as he did so. He cried so hard he leaned back against the tiles at little.
"I love you...I love you so damn much, God bless you for coming back for me - I didn't expect, I didn't dare! " He winced and in that tiny space he was Jimmy Hopper the boy Joyce Kaplinsky befriended all those years ago, lost and so hurt and so alone
"Shhhhh, shhh it's over, it's all over" She snuggled in for a hug and kissed the side of his head. She could hear him sigh into her shoulder and he held her so tightly
She stared and he stared back
She stared and he stared back
With tears still etched across his eyes there was a stare of realisation, of fear, of the moment they were both ready for.
But
He waited for her to realise it too, she did and kissed him. Even then he waited for her courage not to diminish or withdraw but it didn't. Even when he stood up with droplets all over his skin and the pants that he didn't take off, he kept his arms raised, almost in stasis.
It was Joyce that was wanton, Joyce that was passionate. Adrenaline was still rushing through her, he could see that and it made this moment almost fictitious
It was Adrenaline not love
The doubt crippled him but not before she tried taking off her coat and touched at his jeans.
"No, no not like this, not like this" He sighed, barely getting the words out as his insecurities dealt him another blow
She gawped and then nodded, with her arms still lost in her disheveled coat she leaned in nose to nose.
The relief and love he felt was warm and strong and no different than being near a fireside
Up on deck the Feds were up at the wheel as Murray and Dmitry try to warm up with the fire blankets that were in the kitchenette compartment
"They need to get on with it or I'll freeze to death!!"
"You Americans are passionate but you lack passion. He loves her but so little" The escapee shrugged
"He loves her hard, he just doesn't feel he deserves anything" Murray grumbled
"Ah now this I saw, his father?'
"...Was an Asshole" Murray shivered as he remembered the bigoted bully of a man
Murray was far too cold to be gregarious, he was far too tired to be scholarly and to show fluency in Russian, especially around the Feds!!!
"Hopper is good" The Russian grinned
"Broken but good, nobody wants perfect, perfection is a lie" Murray agreed with his own philosophies, as always.
Without absolutely no warning at all he stomped his foot on the deck
"WILL YOU GET ON WITH IT ALREADY?? I WANNA GO TO SLEEP!" Murray yelled over the ocean, his voice echoing into the darkness.
By Daybreak, the agents arranged shifts and the cabin below was still. The Russian and the American took to their corners in the den. One on the breakfast bench and the other on the couch.
Hopper woke up clothed, with a sleeping Joyce also clothed. He stared out at the rising sun and what might be Seattle way in the distance.
He was elated but in the quiet contentment of watching a panorama. This was a small world of new possibilities where nothing could get to him at that precise moment. He leaned over at the sill and sighed deep.
"Hopper?"
He didn't say anything
"Hop what's wrong?"
The silence remained
Joyce sat up slightly agog as the dawn blazed across a scarred man with a handsome face. Peace looked good on him, even if it was for milliseconds.
He pulled her closer to him, tilted his head and bit his lip.
"I love you, I always have - I meant it last night and I'll mean it for the rest of my life"
She smiled but didn't say it back, as guarded as Joyce was, he never expected her to.
"...I know you will" She nodded and grinned
"I know you will...what? Say my name, my real name." He asked her firmly but warily.
I know you will...Jim" Joyce whispered and was responded to with a kiss. A kiss unafraid to linger, to search and to stay.
They were clothed but not for much longer. You'd think it would be of fury, of the most insatiable need...but it wasn't.
It was of two souls stunned and shocked at being alive. It wasn't as basic as sex or as dramatic as love making. It was something else, a yearning for a way to be human again through touch, through senses, through souls.
Jim's hands roamed around under the yellow tee Joyce wore but it was Joyce that took it off. It was Joyce that pushed off his gilet and Joyce that touched that beaten and bare chest.
This is where Jim knew it was real, this very simple but wondrous thing of touch. Not like yesterday where they kissed but the boundaries remained
Today there was no boundary
She lay down on the blue paisley Coverlet of the narrow bed where another single was inches away. Her back was cold as the coverlet was cold, just as the room was cold
Again, not for much longer...
They moved and writhed against each other for a while with only fervour between them. Eventually wide hands slid down broad hips and hooking her thumbs against the belt hoops, she began to pull Jim's pants down
He leaned back, the obligatory question came, out of nobility, out of fear, out of love.
"Joyce are you sure? I mean really?"
A growl came from Joyce, the voice that comes to women that only lovers know. That rare demand of knowing exactly who and what they want in that exact moment.
"I wanted you the day after my boy was saved from hell itself. I wanted you when you begged me to stay in Hawkins. I wanted you when i didn't want anything. I wanted you the minute I saw you in that cell" She panted hoarsely, Jim followed suit.
For as she was answering him, she slid down his pants, her pants and left her bra to be pulled and discarded by Hopper himself.
Love and passion aside it was still cold in that room. The reality of not being that alone didn't help either. Their bodies revealed age and labour, one was from war, the other childbirth via Cesarian. All scars were licked and kissed away.
His wide palms covered vast areas of her elfin frame. her breasts, her back, her neck, her hair, her derrière even. The sheriff was trying hard not to see the symbolism. She was life and he was reaching everywhere for it...
...Everywhere
Her core, her soul, where she hid, all those places the secret garden keeps locked away for good reason. He shared just as much as there was left of him. A ghost no more, now a man made flesh and sharing such with the woman he loved
If this was his only redemption then by God, he would take it
Whimpers began, ever conscious of noise which almost ruined everything else. Even when a synchronicity was found it was still gentle and slow. Until of course, it couldn't be. A thump from the nailed headboard sounded and a secret was out but by then they didn't care.
But at the same time groans were low and whispery. The bear of Hawkins Law enforcement remembered his roar but kept it as muffled as possible. The motions went in time to the sound of thumping of the headboard.
Jim pulled Joyce up and watched with his eyes all aglow as she writhed against him. Cupping his shadow-bearded face in her hands as she gasped again and again into his mouth.
She rippled over him once, twice then three times before the last thump came, this time from Jim Hopper slamming a hand against a wall in aggressive euphoria.
The loudest they were was when they were trying to get their breath back. They held each other cheek to cheek and they both realised there was no turning back from this.
They stared at each other just panting hard. He looked at her in awe, she looked at him with a conviction
"You...are...the most incredible woman I've ever known" He was giddy but it was nuanced, he was still euphoric, still awestruck
That it happened at all
Then she said something that wasn't 'I love you' but another beautiful promise, just like in the days before Vietnam.
"You're all mine, James Hopper and I am never losing you again" She said with a true grit that seemed emboldened and not depleted at all by their love making.
They came up on deck briefly to watch the weirdly milky sunrise that was nestled in fog and morning dew.
Seagulls cawed a congratulations almost for finally squaring up to love and destiny because if this wasn't destiny, what the hell was it??
They went back down and played the game again, this time with the confidence of a new couple that knew they were a couple.
They slept intertwined, rested, safe, loved and near home. The Alchemist of War couldn't ask for more
Wrapping it up in the next chapter...maybe...Maybe plowing ahead who knows??