#listen violent girlhood will always be my shit

[always-andromeda]

Hey hey! I'm sending in a request for strawberry creme with Jim Hopper from ST 💌

– 𝐍𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐆𝐨𝐥𝐝 𝐂𝐚𝐧 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐲

𝐉𝐢𝐦 𝐇𝐨𝐩𝐩𝐞𝐫 𝐱 𝐅𝐞𝐦!𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫

𝐚𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐫'𝐬 𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐞: hey, hey, anon! this is like my first time writing for Hop? and goodness gracious I hope I did him at least a little justice because I adore him so very much.

𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬: implied age gap, implied power imbalance, takes place right before the events of season three, mostly fluff with bits of angst, nothing else I can think of!

Jim Hopper isn't the type to yearn for romance. The time for that had passed by him long, long ago. That was another life. Before the upside down, before his daughter, even before his ex-wife. No, Jim Hopper is a man of the law. He takes care of people. Day in and day out, in whatever little way he can…he tries.

For the most part, Jim tolerates this existence. Taking Eleven in helped break up the monotony a bit. Though, now that she’s taken a front row seat on the Teenage Girlhood Express, Jim finds himself listening to kissing much more than he ever wanted to.

He blocks it out and simply tries not to think about it. He’s not going to get jealous. He’s not designed for those things anymore. Not in the slightest. But when you waltz into his life, it changes everything.

At first he'd barely spare you a second glance as you helped Florence with filing paperwork and taking calls at the department. Quickly approaching her seventies, it made sense for the department to start training a replacement for Flo.

This change was difficult for Jim to adjust to at first. A new staff member meant an entirely new face he'd have to get used to seeing around the office. A new person who has no idea how he takes his coffee and won't stop him from sneaking doughnuts into his office. A new person to worry about saving if the town decides to go to shit again.

Whatever. You'll just have to get over his shortness, the way he rolls his eyes at you, and his tendency to call you "kid" like you're some teenager with knocking knees. Considering the things he's seen, that's what almost everyone looks like to him now.

But there's something particularly benign about you that sets you apart even from anyone else in his mind. The way you pleasantly say good morning and goodnight to him almost every day. The way you always seem to have a smile ready for him. The way that you look up at him with massive eyes like you’re counting on him.

They're all massive red flags that signal him to stay away, no matter how endearing he might find your insistence. Part of him doesn’t like being mean to you. But part of him hopes that the more he pushes you, the more likely you’ll be to get sick of him and put in your two weeks notice. It’s cruel, but it’s what’s best for you, he tells himself.

You bring him his coffee one morning, like you normally do. Completely black, of course. You'd learned the hard way that he craved the burnt and bitter taste on early mornings; of course Jim wasn't the kind of guy who didn't want anything sugar-coated.

He takes a sip of the coffee. Then looks at you with disdain and says, "Did you put sugar in this?" He knows you didn’t.

You stare quizzically with a furrowed brow, "...no?"

"My taste buds are telling me differently, kid,” he jabs back.

And after spending months of trying to soften him, that's the straw that breaks the camel's back for you. As you step closer to his desk, you say defensively, "I'm not a kid, you know. I can do all of the jobs that Florence can now and whether you like it or not, someday she's going to retire and you'll be stuck with me. At some point, you have to accept that."

Jim stands from his swivel chair and comes around his desk. You'd never known him to be violent, but there's a sternness in his eye that makes you second guess your assumption.

With his eyes completely trained on you, Jim says in a low voice, "A girl as nice as you doesn't belong in a town like this."

The simple assertion infuriates you. But before you can voice your disapproval, Jim is pressing his lips over yours. And you're melting into it.

He kisses you like time is running out. Which, for a guy like him, might be true. Who knows, the next day he might be pulled right back through the veil that divides the world he knows and the one that has threatened his own for years now.

People like you were what made his job doable. As long as there were pretty girls like you and your saccharine mouth in quaint little towns like Hawkins just trying to get by...Jim Hopper would always have a job to do.

He pulls away, feeling as if he pushed you away from a moving train. In some selfish way, he thinks he's saving you when he says, "Now you can file whatever complaint you want. Then you can go. For your sake, get out of this town, kid."

You may not have put sugar in his coffee. But there was something sweet about your mouth. A sweetness that he couldn't bear to keep around for any longer.

He dismisses you quickly and you dawdle out of his office, already immortalizing the feeling of his cracked lips against yours and the sharp taste of cigarettes seeping into your own taste buds. 

If Jim's intention was to disgust you so thoroughly that you'd quit, he had no idea what he was up against. Because you find yourself wanting more. You find yourself touching the spot on your back where Jim's large hand had been, pulling you closer to him. If anything, he'd created his own monster; a fire that won't stop burning, no matter how much either of you might try to hide from it.

[galadrieljones]

Thanks for the tag, @cordkitty-ish!! <3

RULES: Always post the rules. Answer the questions asked, then write 11 new ones. Tag 11 people to answer your questions, as well as the person who tagged you

Tags: @thevikingwoman​ @kaoruyogi​ @wrenbee​ @whosafraidofthebigbaddreadwolf​ @tel-abelas-mofo​ @love-in-nature​ @theblackdomino​ @ma-sulevin​ @ladydracarysao3​ @consumed-by-veilfire​ @littleblue-eyedbird​ <3

1) Who is your favourite author? Why?

Joy Williams. She is quite a prominent poet and short story writer, especially during the 70s and 80s. I love her, because she writes shit like this:

Down the river, eight or so miles, was the Gulf of Mexico. He assured her it was there, but she went to sleep and dreamed that she followed the river and it ended only in a fourteenth-century European town of freaks and circuses. Everything was violent or deformed. Tattooed children were being sold, and tiny dead songbirds, clustered like grapes. The river was green and full of animals, stopping abruptly at the town and never appearing again, as though it were painted on, an apron of a stage. Ballistas were mounted on the walls and hides were drying in the sun and everyone was calling to her. (From the story “Woods” in her collection Taking Care)

Williams has been more formative for me, as a prose writer, than anyone else in existence.

2) Who are your three favourite DA characters?

Solas, Morrigan, and Sera

3) List three poems I have to have read at least once.

Philip Larkin: High Windows

T.S. Eliot: The Wasteland

Sharon Olds: Satan Says

These are not pleasant reads, but they are goddam beautiful.

4) If you could go to any century besides the 21st, which would it be and why?

The twentieth. Sorry to be boring, but I would like to have known what it was like to live in a time in which short story writers were like the hip and trendy fucking thing.

5) Have you ever been part of a different fandom (as a writer, in case that applies to you)? Which one?

Not really. Unless you count various boyband fandoms in the 90s (do we count that, @whosafraidofthebigbaddreadwolf? lol)

6) What’s your favourite thing/ theme to read about?

Boyhood. Manhood. Girlhood. Womanhood. These are some of my favorite themes to explore in my own writing, too

7) Name three things you can’t resist.

Fried food. My child. Cigarettes at weddings.

8) Do you have any daily rituals? Which ones?

They mostly have to do with my kid. Like we go on these little “lunch walks” where I slice up some cheese and deli meat and apples and put them on a tray on his stroller, and he eats them as we take a walk to the grocery store. He is a bird like me when it comes to food, only a little at a time, so this is the best way to get him to eat in the afternoon after he gets up from his nap. Plus, then he points to relevant objects and is like CAR and MOO and BALL and it’s adorable. He’s almost two.

9) Early bird or night owl?

Night owl.

10) Favourite instrument to listen to?

I like flutes, especially when they show up in science fiction soundtracks, like in Star Wars or Alien. I played the flute for about ten years and pretty much quit after high school. I miss it sometimes.

11) Name one thing about your (imaginary) partner/ husband/ wife/ SO that you love. (Can range from very significant things to ‘the way he/she/it wrinkles their nose’.)

My husband is, externally, kind of an aloof and stoic man, but inside, he is playful and quite silly. When it’s just us and we’re like, deep in the throes of domesticity, at the end of the night, watching a movie or something, and this silliness comes out one way or another, that is something I love. It makes him seem vulnerable in ways that are not always apparent, even to me.

My eleven questions are under the cut. I stole the first two from this list, as they’re good ones. :-) 

1) Who is your favorite author? Why?

2) Who are your three favorite DA characters?

3) List three songs that you would recommend.

4) What is the best gift you have ever received?

5) Do you have any vices? If so, what are they?

6) If you could live in any city in the world, which would it be, and why?

7) Do you believe in love at first sight? Why or why not?

8) What was the video game that made you fall in love with video games?

9) If you could go back and rewatch any TV show for the first time all over again, which would it be?

10) Do you have a role model? If so, who is it?

11) How do you unwind after a long, stressful day?