Time After Time (a Stranger Things fanfiction)

Eve of Destruction

"Eve of Destruction"

Don't you understand what I'm trying to say

Can't you feel the fear I'm feeling today

- Barry McGuire

A hot shower—well, lukewarm, which was really the best the cabin offered—the next morning made Hopper feel somewhat better, but he was definitely swearing off red wine. "Kee-on-ti," he sneered into the spray, mimicking that snooty waiter with his "very good, sir"s. With some difficulty, he managed to pry the cap off a bottle of aspirin to go with his first cigarette of the morning, and washed it down with long gulps of milk straight out of the carton.

As he was wiping the milk off his mustache he saw the note on the fridge: "Gone to Maxs. Sleeping over. – El". All right, then. He was going to assume she had asked permission at some point that he had been too drunk to remember. That felt safer, because getting mad in his current condition sounded painful.

A knock on the door broke the silence in the cabin, and then he heard the last voice he had expected—Joyce's. "Hopper? Are you there?"

He narrowed his eyes. Getting mad sounded better already. Yanking the door open, he glared down at her. "Oh, look who it is."

She rushed past him without an apology or a pause to notice that he was half-naked, wearing only a towel. "We need to talk."

"Yeahhh, we do." He slammed the door shut. "I haven't been stood up like that since Alice Gilbert in the ninth grade."

Joyce was paying him no attention. She was crouched down in front of his refrigerator, dumping some stuff out of a bag onto the ground.

Slinging on his shirt, Hopper demanded, "What are you doing? Joyce? Hello?"

She held up a hand to stop him. "Just—watch." Picking up the things from the ground, which he now recognized as the magnets he had tripped over in the store yesterday, she tried to stick them to the refrigerator, but they slid right off. Over and over again. She turned and stared at Hopper as though there was something there to be upset about, while he stared back at her wondering when she had gone off her rocker.

"Okay," he said, "you're freaking me out."

Coming toward him, she shook one of the magnets at him. "You slipped on this, remember?"

"Yeah."

"It fell in the night; it lost its magnetism."

"Oh. Did it." Where was she going with this?

"And the same exact thing happened at my house the day before."

"Wow." Like he cared about her history with magnets.

Joyce went on as though he hadn't spoken. "And I thought, okay, that's weird, why are all these magnets suddenly losing their magnetism?"

He put a hand over his face. This must be some crazy dream. He'd wake up from a nap and go on their date and— But Joyce was still talking.

"So, I went and saw Scott."

That got through to him. When she was supposed to be on a date with him, she was with some other guy? "Scott," he repeated sharply. "Who's Scott?"