Chapter Text
“Can you at least call me when you get to your stepmom’s?” Jim Hopper asked, raking a hand through his thinning blonde hair as he shot his stoic girlfriend a sheepish glance. Joyce shrugged as she zipped the slightly overstuffed suitcase on her bed.
“I’ll call the house.”
“Christ sake.”
Joyce’s shoulders went rigid and Jim thought she might turn around to shoot some sort of stinging remark in his face, but a moment later, she sighed, grabbed the handle of the suitcase, and turned. There was no discernable flicker of emotion in her tired, brown eyes, and her mouth was pressed into a tight, thin line.
“Can you let me through? Jonathan has to get me to the train station.”
Jim stepped forward and placed his hands on her shoulders, only to have them immediately shrugged off as she sidestepped him. “Hey, easy! Joyce, I really, really don’t want you to leave for two weeks without us resolving this.”
The thought of her leaving, just as furious as she had been the night before, made his stomach churn and go sour. He reached for her free hand, and nearly recoiled at how cold she was to the touch. Joyce had always ran a little cooler than anyone Jim had ever met, but it seemed more pronounced with this new and sudden space between the two of them. He wanted to rub the small, chilled hand between his large, warm ones, but he was certain the odds of him earning a slap for the gesture were high. His heart skipped a beat when he felt her hand twitch in his grasp, as though she were fighting the urge to squeeze and succumb.
“You said ‘thank God’.” Joyce’s tone was sad, and softer than a whisper.
“I--”
“You told me we didn’t have to get married now, since it was a false alarm.”
“I was there, Joyce, you don’t have to remind me.”
Joyce shrugged, her shining eyes fixed on the carpet as she pressed her lips together. Jim noted a slight tremble in her stubborn chin, and he desperately wanted to pull her into his arms and physically keep her from running off to Florida, to tell her that he’d only reacted that way because… well, he didn’t know why. When she had told him that she was late and the test had come out positive, he immediately went into ‘do the right thing’ mode. He fussed over her, proposed, and started looking into a bigger house, all the while feeling positively suffocated with terror.
Another goddamn kid, and he wasn’t exactly a spring chicken. His real worry was Joyce - she was a year younger than him, but still in her forties. Not exactly an ideal time to have kids, and not when her previous pregnancy had been such a dangerous one. He remembered his mom telling him about it, way back when Diane was pregnant with Sara. He remembered thinking how grateful he was that Diane was made of stronger stuff, and that it wasn’t them dealing with extended hospital visits. What a fucking prick he had been.
So yes, when Joyce came back from the doctor’s office with news that the test had been a false positive, he may have been a little too gleeful, a little too eager to accept that Joyce had only said yes to his proposal because she, too, was thinking about their expanding family and his superior health insurance. So he gave her an out, but hoped she wouldn’t take it. It had not gone over well.
She gently tugged her hand from his grasp, her thin shoulders slumped in defeat, her eyes obscured by her bangs as she kept them cast downward. “I’ll see you in two weeks.”
“Joyce, please; I didn’t know if you wanted to get married because of the kid or…” he trailed off as her head snapped up, her eyes burning into his.
“Two weeks. Make sure the boys don’t burn the house down.”
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Sure enough, two days later, the phone rang. Jim’s ears perked at the sound, and he fought the urge the make a beeline towards it, his mind’s eye conjuring Joyce’s small, pale features as he last saw them; all stormy-eyed and severe. She had been adamant about the two weeks, and he owed her that. Will answered the phone, greeting his mother with an earnest sweetness that made him sound younger than his years.
“Do you want to talk to the Chief? He’s here tonight… yeah, I guess there’s a prowler and he wanted to make… Oh.” Will turned to Jonathan, who was reading a paperback whilst sprawled on the couch. “She said she only has enough time to say ‘hi’ to you and Eleven real quick.”
Jim finished his beer and lumbered heavily towards the front door, where he would enjoy two more beers and three cigarettes in a row.
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“It’s for you.”
Jim turned away from the stir-fry he was painstakingly trying to prepare in time for dinner, dabbing his forehead with a washcloth before frowning at Jonathan who was standing at the threshold of the kitchen, extending the phone towards him.
“Station?”
“Mom.”
Jim turned the dial on the burner and fairly leapt towards Jonathan to take the phone from his hands. It had been a torturously long four days, not knowing where he stood with Joyce, but keeping house for her and sleeping in her bed, where the scent of her hair still clung to the pillows.
“He-ey,” he drawled, his forefinger gently stroking the back of the phone as though it were the pale column of her throat.
“Hi…” She said something else, but it was so hushed and rushed that Jim only caught the word ‘you’. He pressed for clarification.
“I miss you.”
His stomach flipped and tears sprung to his eyes at the confession. He cleared his throat and chuckled nervously. “Aww, Horowitz, you old softie.” His voice cracked despite his teasing tone. He missed her so badly that it tore at his insides and tightened his throat.
Jim could hear what sounded suspiciously like a sniffle on Joyce’s end of the line. “I know when I left we weren’t on good terms but I… I want this to work. Us, you know?”
“I know, I want this to work too. I love you.”
The silence on the other end that followed Joyce’s soft gasp stretched onward towards a good half a minute before Jim said her name. If it weren’t for the gentle-but-ragged breathing on the other end, he would have worried that she’d hung up on him.
“I just realized you’ve never said that to me before. Not when we were kids, not even when you proposed.” Her tone was thin and brittle - as if an ill wind would snap it in two.
Jim sniffed and rubbed at the corner of one eye with the back of his hand. His lips trembled into a faint smile. “It's only because I'm an idiot.”
“I love you too, you know.”
Jim clutched the phone so hard his knuckles went white. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Well why don't you blow off the old lady and prove it? She was always terrible to you anyway.”
“No she wasn't.”
“Fair point.”
“Look Hop, it doesn't matter if you didn't mean it when you proposed. I know we grew up in a time where that's just what you did if you knocked up a girl but… but could we revisit the moving in thing? I liked that.”
He made a mental list of the best jewellers in a 60 mile radius, his attention fading from the rest of their conversation. The first time around had been in the heat of the moment, a reaction to the not-baby; he had snatched the cigar ring that had been resting in the porch ashtray and slid it on the third finger of her left hand. A cigar ring. He’d do better this time.
“Hop?”
“Hmm?”
“I can’t wait to come home. It’s too hot here.”
“Well, it’s Florida, darlin’.”
“My hair looks awful here. If we retire to a warmer place, it has to be a dry heat.”
She wanted to retire with him. She wanted to live with him and retire with him. This was promising, very promising.
“California it is.”
He barked with laughter at the unenthusiastic noise that emanated from her throat, sounding for all the world like a cranky cat that didn’t want to be touched.
“We’ll figure it out, Horowitz.”
“Yeah.”
A day after Joyce was set to embark home on the train, every news station was stuck on what was being hailed as the worst railway accident in history. Jim watched in disbelief as aerial footage of a collapsed bridge played over and over again. He could see the police vehicles and ambulances at the embankment, as smoke and twisted metal. His numb brain processed something about divers, and a search for survivors. His mind raced as the name of the liner repeated over and over in his brain.
It was her train.