"Why are you so antsy?" Hopper laughed as he pulled into the Indianapolis airport's short-term parking lot. Jonathan was coming home from NYU for the first time for Christmas break and it was all Joyce could talk about for weeks. He hadn't been able to make it for Thanksgiving, which was when Joyce and Hopper had originally planned to break the news to him. The additional gap of time had only increased Joyce's anxiety about telling him.

"Because it's just nerve-wracking!" she replied with a chuckle before getting out of the vehicle. She was excited to see Jonathan, she missed him more than she could ever explain. The house had a sudden emptiness to it when he wasn't around. Not that Will wasn't enough to keep her busy. Still, she wasn't looking forward to telling her oldest the truth about Hopper.

The hard part was that she had no idea how he would react to the news. Would he be mad that she didn't tell him sooner? Would he be happy was no longer obligated to have any connection to Lonnie? It was all up in the air, and there was nothing Joyce hated more than when things were in the unknown.

Hopper gently patted Joyce's back as they walked towards the entrance. It calmed her down, as it often did when he made that small gesture. They were getting closer, no doubt. It had been almost three months since the truth came out, and in those three months, they had gotten closer than they ever had. It felt nice. Terrifying, but nice.

In many ways, Joyce could only describe it as how they felt when they were teenagers. She'd be the first to admit that the love she felt for him in high school never really went away after their break-up. She had spent nearly the next two decades trying to convince herself that she was over him, but it just wasn't the truth. 

The two of them trailed through the airport, waiting at the welcoming gate as handfuls of passengers got off of their flights. "You excited to see him?" Hopper asked, breaking the silence between them.

"Yeah," Joyce replied, spaced out as she analyzed the crowd of people. "He said he should land by 3, and it's already 3:30." 

"It's okay. The wind probably just slowed the flight down." he tried to comfort her, eventually giving in and watching the crowd with her. Finally, the familiar face of Jonathan worked his way through the groups of reuniting friends and family.

"Jonathan!" Joyce cried, her voice filled with joy as she ran over and nearly toppled him in a hug. "Oh, how I've missed you." her voice muffled as she buried her head in his shoulder. 

"I missed you too, Mom." the teen smiled, dropping his backpack to give her a proper embrace. "Chief, nice to see you."

"Good to see you too, kid." Hopper smiled, suddenly feeling dizzy from the moment. He was staring at his son in person for the first time since finding out he even had a son. Taking a deep breath, he tried his best to regain his composure.

"Where's Will?" Jonathan asked, looking confused as their hug broke apart.

"Oh! Will's at the Wheelers for a sleepover and Jane is at Max's for a sleepover. Just us for tonight!" she beamed.

"Here uh... I'll get your bags, kid." Hopper offered, earning a timid thank you from Jonathan as they headed down to get his checked luggage. 

---

"I mean, how am I even going to bring it up to him?" Joyce sighed, passing Hopper the cigarette that burnt between her fingers. As far as they knew, Jonathan was off in his room unpacking. They were alone, finally earning a moment to speak in private.

"Maybe the situation will present itself. I mean, this could be a worst case/best case situation, right? Hell, maybe he already knows." Hopper asked, shrugging his shoulders. 

"No," she shook her head. "There's no way that he knows. I made sure of it."

"He may not take it as bad as you think, Joy. I mean, maybe he'll be happy." he was trying to make her feel better. It wasn't working, but she appreciated the effort. 

Joyce ran her fingers through her hair, trying to process his words and take them to heart. "I'm just scared, Hop." 

Jim nodded, looking down at his hands as he tried to think of the right words to say to her. "Do you still wanna tell him?"

"Yeah. I think I'd be angry with myself if I didn't take the opportunity. I mean, I was going to tell him at Thanksgiving and when I realized that I couldn't, the weight just got heavier. He deserves to know, Hop." she looked at him, her doe eyes filled with worry. 

As their conversation went on, the two of them were oblivious to the fact that Jonathan was standing with his ear pressed to the wall, hearing every word between the two of them.

---

A few hours later, Joyce was washing dishes while Hopper sat in the living room, folding the laundry that he offered to help her catch up on. Well, he offered and eventually won the argument of 'You're always feeding me and Jane, let me help you with something once in a while Joyce!'

"You don't have to be scared to tell me, you know." Jonathan chuckled, startling Joyce as he came up behind her in the kitchen. 

Her eyes went wide in fear as she spun around to face him. "T-Tell you what?" she asked, the breath being ripped away from her lungs. Had he overheard them talking? There was no other way for him to have found out... right?

Jonathan rolled his eyes and smiled. "C'mon, Mom. You and Hopper are obviously dating." his voice was quiet, trying to keep from Hopper overhearing them. "Did you think I'd be mad or something?"

"Oh, sweetheart." Joyce exhaled deeply, shaking her head as a sad frown came across her face. "Hopper and I aren't dating."

"Oh," he looked down, his expression clearly filled with confusion. "I mean, I heard you guys talking earlier. I wasn't eavesdropping, I promise! I just heard you mention you wanted to tell me something... I kinda figured it was-"

"N-no." Joyce cut him off, suddenly looking extremely guilty and regretful that she hadn't been more careful. Taking a deep breath, she tried to ready herself for what she was about to face. The truth was long overdue, and he deserved to know that. "Hopper, can you come here please?" she called out. 

When the chief made his appearance, he could see the look on Joyce's face. Without being told, he already knew what was about to happen. Joyce guided them to the kitchen table, her and Hopper sitting across from Jonathan. 

"Um..." she stopped, taking a deep breath. "There's something I need to tell you. Something I probably should've told you a very long time ago." Joyce hated it already. Her words sounded cheesy, like something out of a Soap Opera... As if her life wasn't already turning into one.

Jonathan stared at the two of them, his jaw softly falling slack. Hopper wasn't making eye contact with any of them, which only scared him more. "What?" he asked, his voice barely making an impression. 

Joyce closed her eyes, trying to think of any way to soften the blow. There wasn't a way to do it. Her words would be harsh, they would hurt, no matter how she strung it together. 

"Lonnie..." she choked, somehow not able to push out the rest of her sentence.

"What? What about him? Is he dead?" Jonathan spat out the word as if there was poison on his tongue. 

"NO! No. He isn't..." she gulped. "He, Lonnie, isn't your father." Joyce paused, "Hopper is. Hopper is your biological father. And that's what I- we were going to tell you... what I should've already told you." 

Suddenly, it was as if the world had stopped spinning. Silence, nothing but silence as Jonathan stared at her, processing her words. He was livid, they could already see it in his eyes. All she could do was stare at him, waiting for everything to come crashing down. She watched on her eldest son's face, their son's face, going through the motions without saying a word. Just waiting as the silence stretched on.

"All of these years... All of those wounds," Jonathan paused for a moment that seemed to last lifetimes, his lip quivering while he searched for the words to say. "For nothing." he choked out in barely a whisper. The silence hung over them, waiting for the sudden eruption of words and accusations; but it never came. Instead, the loud screeching of his chair against the linoleum pulled them back to reality. Within a split second, Jonathan slammed his bedroom door behind him.

As soon as they were alone, Joyce's head fell into Hopper's shoulder. He held onto her tightly, feeling tears of his own prickle in his eyes as she sobbed into him. 

---

"You okay?" Hopper asked, walking into Joyce's room to see her curled up in a ball in her bed. "That was a stupid question, sorry." 

It had been an hour or two; Joyce locked in her room, Jonathan locked in his. Jim didn't really know why he was still there, but he didn't dare leave either. 

"It's okay." she sniffled. "Will you sit with me?" she asked, patting at the space next to her on the bed. She wanted to be closer to him, even if it was just for a few minutes. 

"Of course," he answered as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. He trailed over to her bed, comfortably lying down next to her. In one swift movement, she inched over towards him and rested her head on his chest. Hearing the quiet pitter-patter of his heartbeat against her ear instantly calmed her down. It always did.

"I should've just been honest from the start. To both of you," she whispered after a moment of silence, her voice hoarse from crying all evening. She had a lot of regrets in her life, but this one always seemed to take home the gold. 

"No," Hopper whispered, running his hands through her hair. "You were trying to protect the people you love. If you had been honest up front, life would be infinitely different, Joy." 

She looked up at him through her red and swollen eyes. "What do you mean?" 

"Well," he shrugged, "If I had known you were pregnant and that I had a kid on the way, I would've been able to dodge the draft and we probably would've stayed together. You would've never had Will, I would've never had Sara. Who knows where Jane would be in this equation. Shit has been rough as hell but think about everything we wouldn't have if the truth had set us free?" 

She had never thought of it like that. She hated Lonnie to the core but she loved Will with her entire soul and couldn't imagine life without him. It may only have been a few months of her being around, but she loved Jane like a daughter already. "You're right..." she whispered.

"He's gonna forgive you, Joyce," Jim whispered, leaning his head next to hers. "We may not be one big happy family right off the bat, but things are going to work themselves out eventually."

"Family," Joyce repeated, letting that word run through her mind. Her heart started to hammer at the thought of it all. Family, her and Hopper. In a world full of chaos, they were a family.

"Family." Hopper nodded, a serious look taking over his eyes. "We've always been family," he whispered, his palm stroking the side of her cheek. With that, he leaned down and kissed her for the first time in eighteen years. 

And it felt as if they had been kissing only strangers for all of those years

---

It was the next morning when Joyce sighed tiredly as her bare feet padded over the carpet. Her barely clothed body was only dressed in the large beige police button up that Hopper had shed carelessly in their late night rendezvous. The sleeves were beyond her fingertips and the waist of the shirt was just barely touching her knees, but it was the first thing in sight up for grabs.

Rubbing her eyes exhaustedly, Joyce poured somewhere along the lines of the right amount of coffee grains into the filter; she was way too tired to even care. As she waited for her coffee to brew, she plucked a cigarette out of her pack and lit it between her lips. The buzz of nicotine wandered through her veins, quelling the need for a puff. As she waited for her coffee to finish brewing, she saw a scribbled piece of paper on the counter.

'Visiting Nancy and picking up Will from his sleepover. I'll be back at noon. - Jonathan'

Jesus, she couldn't even imagine how long he would be angry with her over this. She couldn't blame him, she was putting through the wringer with this kind of news. What kid wouldn't be mad if they found out their mother had lied to them about their paternity. 

Joyce was brought back from her thoughts as the front door's knob began to jiggle and turn, opening before she could even run and get respectably dressed. Suddenly, a large gust of cold air entered the house behind her oldest son.

"Jonathan!" Joyce said as she stood up, completely startled by her son's early arrival home. "I just read your note, I thought you weren't going to be home until noon?"

"It uh... it is noon," he replied slowly, curiosity charging through him as to why his mother was completely disheveled and wearing...

"Why are you wearing Hopper's shirt? Only his shirt?" Jonathan asked, crinkling his nose together as he braced for an answer he didn't really want to hear.

"Oh! Uh... The roads were bad last night, he uh... he stayed here until it was safe to drive home." complete and utter bullshit, but Joyce didn't want to think about it. She wanted to crawl into a time machine and go back before this happened.

"Still doesn't explain why you're wearing his shirt," Jonathan replied in a shaky and unstable voice.

"Where's uh... where's Will?" she asked as she tried to cover herself up with her crossed arms.

"He's at the Wheeler's still. They were up playing Dungeons and Dragons and didn't go to sleep until like four. I told Mrs. Wheeler that I'd go back and get him later." Jonathan hovered in the same spot through their conversation, fearing that if he went further into the house that he would see something he didn't want to. He had seen Hopper's police blazer in the driveway, figuring that he was here to finish yesterday's conversation. He certainly didn't think he would come home to this.

"I'm gonna" Jonathan motioned towards the hall. "I'm gonna go to my roo- Hopper? Really? I mean you just said that you two weren't dating?" he interrupted himself, his expression somehow a mix of disgust and confusion.

"We aren't!" she blurted out. "I mean... I - Jonathan, don't do this to me right now," Joyce covered her face as she complained, her voice overlapping with his.

"Yeah, yeah you're right. I... sorry." his steps were shifty as he shuffled down the hall, quickly locking himself in his room.

"We got busted, didn't we?" Hop laughed under his breath as he eventually stepped into the kitchen. Joyce collapsed her head on his chest with a groan. He could only laugh, rubbing her back as he grinned.

"This isn't how I wanted to tell him. Poor kid has found out more this weekend than he has in a lifetime." Joyce's voice muffled against his chest with a nervous chuckle.