Time After Time (a Stranger Things fanfiction)

The A-Team

"The A-Team"

If you have a problem,

If no one else can help,

And if you can find them ...

- The A-Team

They left Larry at his house, trying to repair the damage Hopper had done to his face. Hopper considered making Larry promise not to tell anyone what he had told them, but that seemed unnecessary. The only person who wanted anyone to know what Hopper knew less than Hopper did was Larry himself—he had a lot more to lose than anyone else if these folks from Starcourt got pissed off at him for having talked to the wrong people.

On the way to check out the properties in east Hawkins, Hopper and Joyce drove through McDonald's for quick sustenance.

"Hey," Hopper told her, swallowing a mouthful of Big Mac. "I meant it, you know."

"What?"

"You should come work for me. You're too smart for sales; the way you put things together, the way you don't give up until it makes sense, even if the answer is ... impossible—you'd be a great detective. Hell, you are a great detective."

Joyce blushed, staring down at the remains of her cheeseburger. "Look out, Nancy Drew, huh?"

"Are you kidding? You're like Cagney and Lacey ... and maybe Charlie's Angels, too."

"So now you want me to work for the police but spend half my time tossing my ... hair around?"

"I'd be in favor of that," he told her, his voice going husky at the image of this confident, sparkling, sure-of-herself Joyce tossing her hair while she explained all the weird things that happened in Hawkins to him.

She didn't look away, which surprised and pleased him. "Hop." Then she cleared her throat, wadding up the hamburger wrapper. "Let's check these properties out, okay?"

Hopper nodded, accepting the response. "Okay." He put the car in gear and peeled out of the parking lot.

It was dark by the time they got to Hess Farm. There was a car and a truck parked outside the house, which there shouldn't have been since the Hess family had moved out months ago.

"Looks like somebody's home," he muttered, his eyes on the house, watching for anything that might tell him what was going on.

The door was unlocked, and Hopper moved inside the house cautiously, shining his flashlight ahead of him. The place was mostly empty, except for a few pieces of furniture. A single coffee cup sat on a table. A full ashtray rested on the arm of a chair. Someone had been here since the Hess family moved out, that was for sure.

From farther inside the house, there was a noise, a rhythmic rumbling. "Did you hear that?" Joyce asked in a barely-there whisper.

Hopper moved toward the sound, seeing a light fixture left on in the hallway, a single bulb brightening and dimming over and over again as if the power was surging somewhere else in the house.

The noise kept going, getting louder as they made their way silently through the house, but there was no one there, nothing moving that could be making that sound. "Where's that coming from?" Hopper whispered, frustrated.

Behind him, Joyce lowered herself to the floor, listening intently. "It's below us." She pointed at the bed she was kneeling next to, and an air vent built into the foot of it—a vent through which they could see lights flickering.