(no subject)

[keeptheselights]

It might have been disorientating for someone else but, honestly, the last while in Hawkins has been one mad thing after another and Joyce has learned to roll with the punches. It doesn't make her any less dizzy, in the end, but it does make everything easier to take. After they pick up her packet and go to take a look at her apartment, she finds herself in a kitchen that Will says belongs to Hopper. If that's true, it's a definite step up from that cabin in the woods. Looking around, she feels this weird rush of pride at the home he's built here.

Joyce waits, wearing clothes borrowed from Will while her own are washing. She'll need to go shopping but, for now, she cradles a cup of coffee in her hands and she watches the door.

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[keeptheselights]

There's this sudden weight of emotion on Joyce's chest and, for a second, she can't really breathe. She just sits there, her fingers curled tight around Hopper's and, when she looks up, her dark eyes are brimming with grateful tears.

"Thank you, Jim," she says, quietly. "Thank you for looking after my boy."

[something_incredible]

"Hey," he says and squeezes her hand. "Of course."

Will's his body, too, in different ways. All those kids, even Mike, even when he's annoyed with them, they're all his kids. Hopper would do anything to keep them safe, every last annoying one of them during every last annoying minute.

[keeptheselights]

"Just because you would have done it anyway, doesn't mean I don't have to thank you, Jim," says Joyce, gently, looking down at their joined hands and, once again, thinking of how it had felt to have him pressed against her. "I...God, I missed you so much."

[something_incredible]

"I missed you, too," he says. Anyone who knows him much knows this about him. He's talked about her plenty, even during the moments he hadn't meant to, unable to think of Joyce as a part of his past.

And now she's here. With the same memories he has. He doesn't know what that means, but he hopes it can be good.