#chiefhop

junior. the nickname seems to sit ready upon everyone's mouth. the comparison in more just a mirrored reflection. upon first glance he has his father's looks, the same jawline. the only thing that sets him apart are the softness in his features, the color of his eyes. that he remember's. however, his mother's were much lighter, pretty. he remembers when they'd dance in the living room, his feet upon hers to help him keep with the beat. when he would look up the sun would hit her iris' just right and they look like golden honey. he hasn't heard them in so long, but as he sits before @chiefhop he plays the strings upon torn denim. all nerves in a habit. he wonders if the chief really means the words he speaks.

𓂃 @chiefhop liked for deeply insecure asshole s1/s2 steve 𓂃

𓂃 ⭑.ᐟ𓂃 he leans back on his heels, chin tipped up in feigned superiority. a grin flashes–- too easy, given his lack of control. ❛ relax, chief ! if i did something illegal, i wouldn't be standing here ❜

THIS MOUNTAIN'S PEAK OF SUGARY SWEETNESS ARRANGED BEFORE HER IS A CHILDHOOD DELIGHT. eggo waffles stacked four high, drenched with syrup and saturated with butter, the perfect golden - brown crunch she had loved at first bite. it's a VALIANT EFFORT, for hopper's part. except she doesn't feel much like a child anymore. she really never did. and there's a nagging guilt in the way the spokes of her fork twist through the sticky puddle on her plate, scraping over glass until her teeth feel like they want to pry themselves from her gums. she isn't hungry. the lack of it sits in her stomach instead, stale and weighted.

note : this is an oversimplification based on observation, reality is she has not stopped moving since she woke up. since she pulled herself off the sofa with a back ache and a splitting migraine that nicotine is not helping. the direction may have changed from front door to phone, to a six step pattern in front of the television but it is movement all the same.

she takes a long drag from her cigarette to calm her nerves, to distract herself, to have something to do with her hands, it does nothing more than burn her lungs.

joyce exhales roughly, a snake’s hiss that bellows smoke into the air, two fingers holding the cigarette point in his direction.

“ hop, don’t — don’t look at me like that. ” whether the pity in his features is a figment of her imagination is hard to tell. not uncommon for pattern recognition and stress to show her something that isn’t there when it comes to the idea of being judged.

they’ve been through enough together he should know to trust her gut by now, but the razor thin line between true conspiracy and her own paranoia has become far too blurred in the last few years for her to be sure.

for joyce byers the concept of hawkins being safe feels like a distant memory, an outline in the fog. trust in the community long dead and buried in the yard. in the scorch marks in the hall, the smell of burnt meat that never quite went away. the holes in the wall made by a hundred or so nails used to string lights up in every room but johnathan’s. everywhere she looks is a reminder.

it’s why she calls him, a desire to fee safe, to be heard, to be brought back from this desperate spiral by someone who won’t tell her she’s crazy.

⋆　　 ˚　　 ࿔ was it you? did you do all this?

❛ —yeah. ❜ will doesn't mean to sound uncomfortable, but he can't really help it. it's a difficult thing to explain, how the connection to the hive mind allowed him to influence the behavior of those that belonged to it. they weren't really his powers. ❛ i can only do it if they're close enough and alive. ❜ he continued to explain, unsure if any of it was making sense. ❛ i think— if we manage to get close enough to vecna, i'll be able to do it again. i could help her. ❜ will would never try to imply that his own abilities were nowhere near close to jane's. but maybe she wouldn't have to do it completely on her own. maybe they could use the connection to their advantage. out of everyone, hopper would probably be the most grateful to hear that. ❛ what do you think? ❜

“ of course i do. ” his tone is casual like a rising shrug. he's pressed close to the steering wheel, wires pulled and exposed with a firm tug. it like colored nerve endings that he strips with the teeth of pilers. he wonders if @chiefhop is looking at him in that particular way again, like when he had arrested him for selling pot in the alley. it'd been the first time since then that al had crossed his mind, not even the empty space on the couch where he'd live for short stays made him cross his mind. he's use to it after so many years, the solitude and comparisons. it's 'dying' for a town that hated him made a slight reroute in his life. “ remember al? ” the name is a little bitter on the tongue, makes him swallow first, then his lips curl dry.

it was almost dizzying, the nearly complete absence of sound. so was the drifting musk of damp, dewy concrete, the heady waft of warm evening air colliding with the pungent smell of disinfectant — the scent of steel and mold that settled in the old lab's deserted thoroughfares like the ravaging stain of age on a scattered stack of abandoned x - ray films she'd trod past three times.

jim's voice only half - cut through the cinderblock wall of self - barraging thought she'd gotten lost in. ( the feigned autopsy. the coverup. the bob of it all. )

joyce's depleted searchlight of a gaze roamed, despite it, slow and discerning, from the patched up wall up ahead to a tangled snarl of wiring ripped out of the side of a security console; from liminal expanse of evacuated hallway to liminal expanse of evacuated hallway. when she continued forward, one heavy, dragging step after the other, it was the flicker of hopper's flashlight across a blacked - out stretch of window that jostled her out of her own head: one infallible instance of movement, when everything else had fallen into desolation, so cold, so still.