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It’s nestled in the back of his top drawer where she won’t bother to look. His mom’s ring, tucked into a small, velvet, drawstring pouch because he never had a box for it. Doesn’t even know if his mom had a box, to be honest.
It was sort of funny, actually. Long before she’d died, his mom told him that he should give it to “his girl.” Mom had loved her, loved Joyce from the start. She wasn’t the only one though. Even that long ago, he knew “his girl” was Joyce Ann Maldonado.
Maybe especially that long ago.
In high school it had been easier. There’d been other girls who wanted to mess around, but only Joyce was the one who’d wanted to do life together. She was the one who was content, happier even, to sit and talk for hours on end, expecting nothing from him other than that he’d listen to her just as she did to him. Back then he was her hiding place and she was his confidant. Come to think of it, maybe not much had changed.
Then Nam had messed everything up. He’d gone to war, leaving Joyce behind and in the vacuum she’d continued her life.
He didn’t begrudge her for it. He was the one who’d left. And it wasn’t as if he would have traded his time with Diane and Sara, even though he ultimately lost them, just like he knew Joyce wouldn’t turn back the clock on Lonnie and erase her boys. But if he could have spared her the pain of an abusive marriage and all that entailed, he would have.
So he’d gone to war, started a family, lost everything that he thought mattered, then he came back to Hawkins with walls around his heart.
And there was Joyce.
At any rate, he’d thought his mom’s ring was lost, but they’d been trying to clean up his trailer when he had stumbled across it. Thankfully Joyce hadn’t been in the room when he had uncovered it, but Jonathan… Well, it had been a good time to talk to him about what he planned to do with the ring.
“You make her happy,” the teen shrugged. “Well, more than happy. It's like she's not scared, not hiding. She's never been more herself, I guess, if that makes sense.” Then he shrugged again in that Jonathan-way that was so similar to Joyce.
“So it's ok with you then?”
“Yeah,” Jonathan nods. “Better than ok. Look, you know I don't like to talk about… well, I don't want to get weird but you're the closest thing we have to a dad and you're definitely the best thing that has happened to my mom.”
So he tucked it into the little velvet pouch, snuck it into the back of his top drawer, and started to plan what it would be like to finally propose– nothing big and showy he thinks, sweet and sentimental and intimate– to the woman he’d loved for more than half of his life.
She walks into the room when he’s got the drawer open. He doesn’t think she sees anything, doesn’t think she suspects, but he decides on a distraction anyway. He gently closes the drawer as she comes up behind him, snaking her arms around. He feels her inhale gently and plant a kiss on his back. So he turns around and deflects, asking his question, brow raised and smile on his face. Just like all the best distractions, it’s couched in truth, in something he actually does want to know. She’s been especially clingy lately. Well, maybe clingy is too strong or needy of a word. But more touchy. Physical. Close.
“What's going on with you lately?” he teases.
It’s nestled in the back of her top drawer where he won’t think to look. The positive pregnancy test. It’s not that she's hiding it from him. Well, she is, but not because she wants to keep it a secret. She’s actually starting to get excited to tell him. It’s just a secret still because she wants to tell him at the right time.
They were never as careful as they should have been but they’d clearly been overly confident. And now with another Armageddon on the horizon, it is far from ideal timing. Still, after she was done freaking out a little (a lot), she couldn’t help but believe that Jim would think the same thing she had once she sat with it for a bit: If they’d made it all this time just to get pregnant now, it was just in the cards. It was what the universe had planned for them. Or fate? She didn’t know what to call it, but she knew it was meant to be in spite of everything.
She comes up behind him and wraps her arms around him as he closes the dresser drawer, planting a kiss on his back through the thin shirt he wears to bed (then rips off ten minutes later because he is a furnace). She presses close and can feel his scars and smell his soap, their laundry detergent, and something that is just him.
“What's going on with you lately?” He hums, turning around to put his hands on either side of her waist. “Not that I’m complaining.”
“Nothing's going on,” she says far too quickly.
“You're a terrible liar, you know that?”
She throws her head back and laughs at his assertion, knowing it is true.
“I’m not lying,” she insists. With a smirk. A smirk.
“Yeah, not buyin’ it, Maldonado.” He tucks her hair behind her ear and looks straight on. “You know you can tell me anything,” he whispers, suddenly tender instead of playful.
His hands, back on her waist, slip just under the hem of her shirt and she shivers. Every touch feels like a lot. She can practically feel sounds she’s so sensitive. She knows she won’t keep her little secret for long and just blurts it out, unable to help herself.
“I’m pregnant,” she says, scared to look at him and simultaneously desperate to see his response because she knows his heart.
His hands tighten on her waist just a bit. “Holy shit,” he whispers.
But she looks up to meet his gaze again and sees the utterly ridiculous grin that she loves so much plastered on his face.
“Yeah,” she whispers back, chuckling softly, because she doesn't really have words right now.
He bends down to kiss her and then mumbles, “Are you sure?”
“Mm-hmm,” she murmurs, biting her lip. “So it’s…” she trails off, searching for what to say as she shrugs. She really should have thought this through, what she wanted to say. “Okay?”
“Okay?” he replies, sounding incredulous. He drops down on their bed and pulls her to stand between his knees. “It’s basically a miracle, don’t you think? Or, I dunno, fate? At our age? And with how careful we are?”
“Not that careful,” she snorts, levity added to the serious moment.
Tugging her closer he kisses her still-flat belly. “We’re having a baby, Joyce.”
“Uh-huh,” she nods, beaming.
“There's only one problem,” he begins and immediately she’s on alert.
“I knew-”
“Let me talk, woman,” he says, gruffly, but she sees the absolute adoration in his eyes and her heart calms almost immediately. His hands are on her again, still, and by the time he stands and plants a tender kiss on her lips and another on her forehead she’s blissfully at peace in spite of whatever “problem” he’s about to share with her.
“I’ve been planning something for you, for us,” he takes her hand in his giant one and stands to lead her over to the dresser. “And now I’m worried you’ll misunderstand me and think this is about a baby and not you.”
Her eyebrows scrunch up.
“See, I love you,” he says simply.
She wonders if she should say something back but she’s still having that problem with words, how she can’t find the right ones. So she listens.
“I have for a long time. And I will, forever. And I’m tired of wondering what if about our pasts when we have now and I want every minute of it with you.”
He’s reaching into that top drawer and for a moment she’s confused because she knows what’s in her drawer. But he draws out a small velvet pouch and he’s crouching down on the floor on his knees in front of her and her own knees are feeling like jelly. Her tears, previously held at bay, are falling and she can’t see him, but she finds herself knee to knee with him on the floor.
“I wanna get married, Joyce. Will you marry me?” He somehow scoots them closer together, wiping the tears away. “Oh, babe,” he chuckles huskily.
“I think it’s just hormones,” she gives a watery sniffle.
Then he gathers her to his chest and whispers into her wild cloud of hair, “I really do, you know? Love you.”
“I know,” she mumbles into his shirt, tucked against him, voice still wobbly. “I love you too. Oh! And yeah, I wanna marry you, Hop.”
He shifts to lean against the dresser, to hold her close. She feels safe and cherished. She feels like she can breathe. He feels joy, a glowing ember of so much hope.
No more secrets in top drawers, only joy revealed.