Thread: Coffee and Contemplation | tempted halo

It was May 23rd, 1984. The supposed April showers had long ago worn out their welcome, and with the third massive rainstorm of the month having barely given the last one enough time to let the ground return everything it had soaked up before it was becoming increasingly unlikely that they'd ever get a chance to see the damn flowers in full bloom. More to the point, four in the morning was far too early for any kind of inclement weather to be pounding that loudly on the thin roof of James Hopper's mobile home. Outside maybe, the steady thudding of the heavy rainfall on the front overhang harmoniously syncing with the spiking water of the lake would have made for a soothing natural symphony to enjoy a hot cup of coffee to, just barely safe from the torrential downpour on account of the flimsy structure over his head. Give him a couple more hours of sleep and a day off to follow, and he'd have been the torchbearer for that sounding like a damn fine idea. Instead, he was given an answer to his frustrated throwing of a pillow over his head by way of thunder so damn potent that it set the wood-paneling of his squalid little domicile rattling almost as much as his teeth did in sympathy. The message was clear. Time to get up. When you weren't trying to sleep through it, there was a peaceful solitude about a really good storm. If you didn't have to be worried about your minuscule living quarters literally coming down around you or blowing back into the lake on account of a particularly stiff breeze, so much the better. Plenty of people liked to say that pets ended up resembling their owners, but this was one case of a house that did the same. After all, you could take one look at the chief's living situation and make some pretty clear assumptions it was built for transience, not much to look at on the outside, and disorderly to the point of chaos on the inside. All that bein' said, the damn thing still weathered every storm you could throw at it, and what looked like chaos to most made perfect sense when you were the one living in the middle of it. As for not being much to look at, well, exceptions prove the rule sometime. Still, he looked a sight better after a fresh if uncomfortably cold shower than he had upon waking up. There was plenty of time to let his hair dry itself out even if the rain coming down made that a more or less moot consideration, and looking to the porch for the paper in this kind of weather was a fool's errand to even consider. He'd have to be at least half as dimwitted as some of his coworkers seemed to think behind his back to expect that the antennae was holding up any better outside, much less that there'd be anything on the TV worth putting up with this early. He stuck to the rain for his company and entertainment. The pot of coffee had just begun to bear fruit by the time he'd pulled his undershirt down to tuck it in and cinch his belt tight, but he gave it a little more time before he even wanted to button up his jacket and look smart and ready for work hours yet before the station opened its doors. There was no crime happening at this hour in Hawkins, rainstorm or clear skies. Hell, there was no crime happening in Hawkins period . Not of the variety of old spouses sniping at one another, not teenagers vandalizing the corners on Main street, and since last November, not even any secretly going on right beneath all of their ignorant, trustworthy noses. Jim returned to the only source of light currently casting shadows around the trailer that weren't flickering in the wake of a particularly brilliant lightning strike to take up his straight razor, run the water hot, and trim his goatee while the drip of the coffee pot was lost in the rain. A part of him wondered if Will was up right now. He'd been thinking about the kid a lot, off and on, ever since he'd vanished just over six months ago. In the week following his disappearance, it had been only damn right that he'd been thinking about the kid given that it had been his job to find him, and he'd been one of the only people in the city who had even begun to scratch the surface of what is vanishing had really been about. Most disappearances didn't end up in a funeral being held for the missing with a fake body in the casket. Most disappearances didn't lead to you disappearing yourself into a twisted nightmare of what you thought the world was. Hopper hadn't dealt with a lot of nightmares in his life. Like most people, he'd had those moments of stark terror that sent him bolt upright in bed, but unlike several others, he never remembered the cause of them. He only remembered the fear and the adrenaline of waking up, and before that, blackness. A part of him had begun to suspect that the other world that had nearly consumed Will Byers was that same blackness that nightmares had been made of, a memory from a time and place that he'd never known but which had always been right there, under his own feet. As black as the coffee steaming in the mug as he leaned out on the railing of the steps into his home, staring at the grey torrent of water washing out the world in front of him. If it weren't for the occasional bolt of lightning clarifying the world, Jim would've damn sworn that Hawkins had never looked more like the other Hawkins than it did right now, or than it had during the two prior, equally torrential rainstorms that had swept the state. And if he was going to be forced to remember that, Will was part and parcel with it. Will Byers, Joyce Byers, and that girl. They were all inextricably linked to the other Hawkins in Hopper's memory, and it was going to be one of the three who surfaced in the steam of his mug. Most likely, it was going to be one after the other. Hopper had been asked, insomuch as the government really ever asked anyone to do anything that they were ordering you to do, to keep an eye on the kid. He had been sure when he'd stepped into that car last November that it was going to be the last Hawkins had ever seen of him, and with a little boy back in his mother's arms, that was alright by him. If they needed him for something -- hell, if they just wanted him gone , then that was going to be the end of it. But they didn't know. No one had ever been through that portal, without protection, for as long as Will Byers had. They didn't know . They didn't know what kind of effect that would have on anyone, much less a boy as young as Will. They didn't know if he was dying or if he was superhuman, or if he was just the same young man he'd been before his world had gotten turned upside down. What they knew was that MK Ultra was at an end, and Hawkins was finally going to get to be the small, independent town that it had already thought it was. They were going to get to live their lives. And yet they still needed to know. They needed someone they could trust to do the right thing, not just for the greater good, but for Will's specific good. Just keep an eye on him. Make sure he gets his check-ups. And call us if you need anything. Hopper took a sip of the coffee, feeling the bracing acidity of the instant mix coax him further awake, and rolled his broad shoulders back into something that was almost a stretch. It went without saying that the number was to be used immediately if he came across any information about their missing person. And James Hopper had looked them in the eyes and promised them that they'd be the first people to know if he learned anything. When you were honest, trustworthy, and loyal, it was even easier to lie to people than they would have expected an outright con artist to be capable of. Never mind that they had no information on what happened to someone when they crossed through to the other side for a week, they damn well didn't know what happened to someone who had been there for six months. And Hopper, for all his lack of superstition, knew that she was. It could've been a raccoon stealing from his stash for all he knew. That's most likely what it was, the clever little trash-possums. But raccoons or no raccoons, every week for six months, Hopper had gone out and left his care package on Friday night. And every Friday night afterward, the box was empty and waiting for another one. At first it had only been food, leftovers and Eggos. Then he'd put a book from the library in, Where the Red Fern Grows , and he was pretty damn sure no raccoon wanted anything to do with that. It had still disappeared. A flashlight. A screwdriver. A blanket. He didn't know what to keep putting in the box, didn't know what was needed, didn't know what was or wasn't helping. The only thing Jim Hopper knew was that it felt like the right thing to do. That was the only thing he'd ever known when it came to deciding what came next in his life. And when you face down your nightmares, walk into them, and emerge to repair the hole in someone else's life it's hard not to start wondering if that had been the reason you'd been put on Earth all along. In a lot of ways, Hopper would never do anything better than saving Will Byers, who might well be up and staring out his window as the rainstorm made it impossible to sleep across town. He couldn't save his own, but he could save someone else. It felt right. A neat little button on his story. But something still had to happen after that. Pushing paperwork for a series of disputes and matters of civil discourse down at the station for another twenty or thirty years couldn't be it. It was small, unexplainable even to himself, but putting things into that box every week gave him a reason to keep going until the next week. It gave him a reason to remain clear headed whenever the second or third beer in the fridge started to look better, until two or three months after he'd started, it was down to pushing aside even that first one. There was a purpose in the purposelessness of making Eggos and knick knacks disappear to an audience of none, the worst magician that Hawkins had never seen, and even if it did nothing but make him feel as though he was doing something, Hopper was content with that. Had anyone ever found their source of contentment in the mundanity of life by making frozen waffles disappear into a box in the woods? Maybe not. But stranger things had happened.