During their high school years you could always find Joyce and Hopper glued to each others side. Even when Hop was screwing all of the girls on the cheerleading team, he always managed to find his way back to Joyce. They finally decided at junior prom to make it official and from that point onward they were practically destined to be together for life...at least that's what everyone else had thought. It wasn't until the end of their senior year that Joyce decided to end it and soon after she could be seen with Lonnie Byers.
Hopper told himself that he would be fine, the Vietnam War was going on and he would be drafted and would finally be away from this small town and from Joyce. After the war ended and he returned home he always told himself that he was happy, always tried to convince himself that everything was alright. And for a while everything was alright...until he lost Sarah. He couldn't handle the pain of losing his daughter. He couldn't handle his wife sobbing at all hours of the day, asking him to hold her and console her. He couldn't handle the way his mind would play back the last moments of his daughter's life- a tube shoved down her throat and being in pain with every breath she managed to take.
So that's why he moved backed to Hawkins. Hawkins had been filled with both good and bad memories for him but it was where home was. It was where Joyce was. Hop thought that if he could just be in the same vicinity as her that maybe he could learn to be happy again. Except he never got the courage to talk to her. He would see brief glimpses of her at her job or while walking her kids through town but something would always stop him. Maybe it was the fact that she looked completely different than she had in high school; beaten down, almost like a walking corpse. Or maybe it was the fact that she had moved on from him and probably didn't even remember the love they once had together.
That's why he was so shocked to see her in his office the day that Will went missing. This small, fragile woman was still able to break him down even after all these years. He could see the faint spark in her every time she called him "Hop" or every time he pissed her off. Each time her nostrils would flare or she would say his name it only reminded him of the times when he would pin her against the wall and kiss her when they were teenagers. Hopper always had a protective nature when it came to her back then and each time he's with her it only confirms that that has never gone away.
After they found Will in that godforsaken place he told himself to leave her alone; that she only needed him to find her son and she probably didn't want anything else to do with him. Flo came into his office several days later to tell him that Joyce was coming down to the station to fill out paperwork- just the standard forms you have to fill out when your missing child is actually in a completely different dimension. So when he heard a knock on his office door he was surprised to see her standing there fidgeting with the purple sweater she was wearing.
"Joyce..." said Hop, immediately standing up and letting his chair scrape across the floor.
"I don't mean to bother you. I just wanted to say...well I guess...um. I'm sorry, I don't really know how to thank the man that helped you bring your son back from an alternate dimension. It all seems made up in a way." Joyce said, intensely staring at a spot on the floor so as not to make eye contact with him.
Hop smiled, "I wish I could say I was just doing my job but usually this job doesn't involve that."
There was a brief moment of silence between them where they both didn't want to say what was on their minds. Hopper took this time to take her in, noticing how much healthier and happier she looked. In the week that Will was missing it seemed as though she had lost all of the weight on her body and it was nice to see that she was gaining it back. She looked good...she looked like...his Joyce.
"Why have you been avoiding me?"
He wouldn't have caught the question if the room hadn't been dead silent. The look on her face showed that she didn't really mean to say that out loud. She chanced a glance up at him and he took pride in the way her cheeks turned pink once she caught him staring at her. He proceeded to walk around his desk so that he could close the door behind her, and pulled up a chair for her to sit in, which she gladly took. After she settled in he knelt down in front of her and gently took her hand in his.
