Time After Time (a Stranger Things fanfiction)

King of Pain

"King of Pain"

I have stood here before inside the pouring rain

With the world turning circles running 'round my brain

I guess I'm always hoping that you'll end this reign

But it's my destiny to be the king of pain

- The Police

Joyce pulled her chair up next to the phone jack on the wall, placing the phone in her lap. She still wasn't sure where the determination to demand two weeks' advance from Donald, who was a notorious tight-fist, had come from, but one minute she had been shaking, filled with fear, and the next minute words were pouring out of her, about Will and about herself. Not hysterical words, but calm, focused, honest words. And Donald had listened, and now here she was with this phone, and a pack of Camels, and two weeks' pay in her pocket. What she would do when it was time to pay back the advance was something she was going to worry about later. For now, she was going to sit here and wait for the phone to ring. Will was out there somewhere—she could practically feel his presence—and he would find a way to call again. Her job was to be here, ready to answer, when he did.

*****

Hopper stood on the edge of the quarry, looking down into the blue water. If he was a betting man ... well, this was where the odds were. Kid's running, he's scared, it's dark, and he loses his balance.

But he couldn't think that way, not and keep his sanity—not and have any chance of helping Joyce keep hers. That phone call, now. The kid's breathing? That wasn't much to go on. It wasn't anything, in fact, except a hysterical mother hearing what she wanted to hear. But she hadn't been wrong, either—in her shoes, he would have thought he knew Sara's breathing, and he would have challenged anyone who told him he didn't. He cringed even now at some of the things he had insisted were true after she died, like telling Diane that he could hear her calling him in the middle of the night, going out into the cold to look for her. So he understood where Joyce was, but he was also afraid to let her go any further, afraid to lose her entirely. While he had shut Powell down when he'd said she had been only a few steps from the edge already, there was some truth to it. Thin as she was, stressed as she was, scared as she was, how much more could she take?

No, he said to himself, stepping back from the quarry. He wasn't going to think of her son being down there until there was literally not a rock left in Hawkins that he hadn't looked under. He owed Joyce that. Hell, he owed Will that.

*****

Jonathan came tearing home in a mood, slamming the door behind him. Joyce stood up, her heart pounding with hope. She hadn't believed Lonnie was involved, but that would be so simple, it would be so easy for everything to go back to normal ...

But a look at Jonathan's face confirmed what she had already known. "He wasn't there."

"No. And the asshole—"

"Jonathan. He's your father."

"He's an asshole!"

Joyce couldn't argue too much with that.

"I'm getting my camera, I'm going to go look for ... something. Anything."

"What do you think you're going to find at this hour?"

Jonathan turned and looked at her, at the phone she was clutching to her stomach. "I have to do something, Mom. I'm going crazy thinking about him out there, lost, cold, scared ... I have to do something."

"I know."

She didn't say anything else, even the reminders to be careful, to take something to eat, to remember extra film, that she might have called after him in normal circumstances. She just sank back into the chair and held the phone a little closer.

*****

Finding Benny this afternoon, that had been— Well, there was a reason he wasn't a big city cop anymore, and it wasn't just Sara. Looking down at the body, Hopper had thought about late night burgers and a man who sat across the table and talked to him about fishing, even when he wasn't coherent enough to form words. Benny had been one of the good guys, always there when you needed him, free food, money, whatever anyone needed from him. The idea that he might have killed himself was incomprehensible to Hopper. It had been incomprehensible to Benny's dad, who should have been looking forward to a good decade's worth of fishing trips with his son and now had nothing.

The only thing that had come of it was Benny's dad's report of a kid at the restaurant, a kid with a shaved head who might have been Will Byers. The ID had been doubtful, but it hadn't been a no, which was a hell of a lot more than Hopper had had to go on before.

And the teacher had found some piece of cloth in a storm drain leading into Hawkins National Lab. It didn't seem possible a kid could, or would, crawl in there ... but if the kid had been afraid, and it seemed like he must have been, what with the left-behind bike and the half-loaded shotgun at his house. It was a lot of running in the middle of the night, but fear was a good motivator.

"Hey. Jim. I'm still here." The voice was soft and amused. He had been hoping Cynthia would take his mind off things, because God knew he needed to stop thinking for a good long while, but he kept drifting away, lost in thought, trying to work through the tangles and find the answer to who shot Benny and where the kid was and why the hell he was here in Hawkins ...

"Sorry," he muttered, and pulled her close, kissing her hard. She responded eagerly, and he lifted her off her feet and half-carried her to the bedroom. That round, and a few beers, and another round later, stopped the thoughts for a while ... but sure enough, here he was lying awake again while Cynthia slept the peaceful sleep of someone who wasn't a police officer. Sometimes Hopper thought how nice it would have been to be a truck driver. Or a mailman. Or a liquor store clerk. But who was he kidding? He had never been able to imagine himself as anything but a cop. And usually he was good at it.

Stifling a frustrated growl so as not to wake Cynthia, he got out of bed, pulling on his pants and shirt, and stood by the lake for a long time, drinking beer and listening to the crickets and the frogs and the other nightlife. They had their shit together out there, lucky ducks.

Cynthia woke up eventually and came out, wearing nothing but his corduroy overshirt. "What are you doing? It's freezing."

He turned to her, wanting to put his arms around her, wanting to ... wanting, just once, for a woman to be something more than sex to him. Without knowing he was going to, he said, "You ever feel cursed?"

She didn't answer. Didn't know what to answer.

So he explained. "You know, the last person to go missing here was in the summer of '23. Last suicide was the fall of '61."

Cynthia stared up at him, still not sure what to say, but sure she wasn't going to indulge his morbid belief that he had somehow brought this all on just by being here. Eventually she took his hands and got up on tiptoes. "What about the last person to freeze to death?" she asked, smiling a little, hoping for a smile back. But Hopper was fresh out of smiles. When he didn't respond, she let her smile fade. "Hey. Come back inside. Warm me up."

It was a nice offer, but ... he couldn't. Not tonight. Maybe not ever again. She was a nice woman—too nice for someone like him—but she didn't understand him, and she probably never would. "Just give me a minute out here," he told her, but what he meant was that he was going to stay out here until she fell asleep and probably until the sun came up and a new day brought the same problems back for him to solve.

And from the look on her face, she knew it, too. He wished he cared more.

But he cared about Benny. He wanted to know who had killed his friend. And he cared about Will, for the kid's own sake and for Joyce's and for Sara's, and he needed to find some trace of the kid. So tomorrow he would be a cop again, a real one, and he would get some answers.