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Down The Rabbit Hole >> Jim Hopper X Reader

Title: Down The Rabbit Hole

Paring: Jim Hopper X Reader

Warnings: fluff, references to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland  by Lewis Carroll, this features reader as a teacher at Hawkins Middle School.

Spoilers: yes. Make sure you've seen Stranger Things S2

Requested by: a user on tumblr.

Author's Note: IF YOU DON'T THINK JIM HOPPER HAS READ TO ELL WHEN SHE GOES TO SLEEP AT NIGHT -- THEN YOU NEED TO CONSIDER THE FACT THAT HE READS THE STORY OF ALICE IN WONDERLAND, IT'S MY HEAD-CANON OKAY? 

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A school teacher's wage was decent. It had you living in a nice, small house paying rent by the week, living modestly in the small town of Hawkins. You wanted a dog, but didn't have the yard, or fence for it. You taught history, but inside, wished you could teach English. But your mother, and your mother's mother were teachers, and all the __________ family name had been teachers since women could be teachers, and there was no greater subject in your lineage than history. It wasn't that history was terrible, but perhaps, that the greatest things to ever happen had already happened, and life in 1982 would never live up to the epics.

But that was true until you all but fell into the rabbit hole, or rather, the conspiracy of danger that lurked after dark in Hawkins. It had been a Friday night, and unlike those who unwound from the weekly stress by watching Charlies Angels, you took yourself on long walks around the lake, taking time to remove your mind from unruly students and unmarked tests to be completed before Monday.

But it was here you found something truly and utterly horrible. The body of one of your students, the young Will Byers, the body blue and bloated upon the water's edge. You wasted no time calling 911, and when State Trooper O'Bannen came to the scene, you were frightened out of your wits. You wished you could take a week from work to process the horrible thing you found, but it wasn't an option. The kids at Hawkins Middle School needed to keep the daily routine, despite the death of a fellow student.

Apart from Mrs. Byers, the only person who stopped long enough to care about what you saw was the Hawkins Chief of police, Jim Hopper. But then again, he was chasing a case too, because not too long after that, another student went missing, from a grade you didn't teach. Barbara Holland. And then there as something about a little girl, with a shaved head –

You kept your head down, and taught history to the classes you had. No matter how strange the world seemed now, there was one consistent thing that kept your kids writing their essays on time, and that was the fall of Rome.

You even planned to have an in-class event where you would bring in old sheets and had them dress up like senators. Minus the stabbing, of course. But you didn't, in the end. Instead you put on a VCR of Julius Caesar and fast-forwarded past the murderous parts.

But as much as going back to everyday life went, it just couldn't. Perhaps it was because every so often, you'd have a knock on your classroom door, a visitor on your home's doorstep. The one and only Chief Hopper. And further down the rabbit hole you fell – unrequitedly in love with the police chief.

"Do you have ten minutes?" he'd ask, eyes pleading. "I need to hear your statement again for the Byers case."

You'd agree. Ten minutes would turn to an hour. Talk would stay mostly on topic, until he'd notice your empty ring finger, and you'd notice the tan line on his, empty. Then he'd get radioed in by the station, and off he'd go.