Time After Time (a Stranger Things fanfiction)

Crazy for You

"Crazy for You"

I'm crazy for you

Touch me once and you'll know it's true

I've never wanted anyone like this

It's all brand new

You'll feel it in my kiss

- Madonna

It had been hours. Yuri clanking away at the helicopter, Murray annoying everyone, Antonov slowly growing more impatient, Joyce watching the phone, Hopper's nerves jangling waiting for ... something to happen. Something was bound to, and it wasn't going to be good.

Between them, they had moved 'Katinka' out of the shed, and Yuri kept proclaiming she was ready to fly and then dialing it back.

Murray and Antonov were on babysitting duty, watching Yuri, trying to catch him in whatever sabotage he was guaranteed to attempt, while Joyce paced back and forth by the phone. Between his injuries and his need to stay by the phone—and his unstated need to stay near Joyce, which he was pretty sure everyone got but her—Hopper had drawn the long straw that allowed him to stay inside, too. Watching that damned phone. Every once in a while picking up the receiver to make sure it still had a dial tone.

Bored, he started looking through crates, finding clean clothes. Garish, ugly clothes, but clean and not smelling like the sewer, which felt like a win. He dug through looking for Joyce's size. There wasn't much—Yuri was smuggling for prison guards, not their wives. "Yeah," he said, turning around with a t-shirt and a pair of jeans in his hands. "These are the smallest I could find. That's it for shirts."

Joyce unfolded hers, frowning at the image on the front. "Oh. Well. Cute." She displayed it to him. A muscle bound bald guy. At least he wasn't as hairy as Murray, Hopper thought.

He laughed. "Yuri has good taste. What can I say?" He handed her a pair of boots that looked like they might fit her, and a puffy red white and blue jacket. She'd be a walking target, but hopefully they wouldn't be going anywhere that she needed concealing.

Joyce surveyed the room, looking for a quiet corner to change. Heading toward it, she bumped into Hopper. "Oh. Sorry."

"Sorry." They both laughed awkwardly.

She hefted the pile of clothes in her arms. "I'll go over here."

"Okay."

Hopper found himself a quiet corner as well, relatively shielded. Not that he was particularly modest anymore, not after nearly a year in a Russian prison, but ... well, it was Joyce, wasn't it? He was kind of hoping that if she ever saw him naked again, it would be under better circumstances than these.

As he was changing, he looked up, opening a fancy box that lay on a shelf in front of him. Bingo! Bandages, sterile ones, to replace the strip of filthy undershirt Joyce had wrapped around his arm. He unwound it and started carefully rewrapping the wound.

Joyce finished changing, looking over her shoulder across the room at Hopper. He was stripped to the waist—she could just see the edge of his shoulder and his arm. Suddenly it was hard to breathe. God, this was a stupid time to be thinking about ... any of this. But they were alone, for the moment, and she had missed him so much. She had thought she'd never see him again, and that had only brought home to her how much she—yes, how much she loved him.