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The sky over Hawkins was never able to regain its original color. Since the defeat of Vecna, and the death of Jane Hopper, the horizon remained stained by a sickly, purplish hue, like a wound that refused to heal. There was no more sun, only a diffuse luminosity filtering through the clouds of soot that now formed part of the city’s atmosphere. The town, once the beating heart of the American suburbs, now exhaled the metallic scent of ozone and something deeper, the sweet, putrid aroma of the Upside Down’s vegetation rotting slowly beneath the soil.
The four rifts that had sliced through the city had been sealed, but the asphalt remained like a keloid scar, irregular and hot to the touch, separating neighborhoods that had once been united by tree-lined streets. The rain in Hawkins didn't cleanse anything; it only weighed things down. It was a dense, almost oily precipitation that fell without the freshness of nature, carrying with it the gray dust that still floated in the air. It brought no life to the flowers; it drowned them in a dark mud that seemed to have a will of its own.
Karen Wheeler stood on the back porch, arms crossed over her pastel cashmere cardigan, a shade of pink that now seemed offensively cheerful against the desolation outside. A nearly empty glass of wine was balanced precariously in one hand, the crystal cold against her trembling fingers. She wasn't looking at the covered pool or the empty swing set; before her, the perfectly trimmed yard was transforming into a swamp under the relentless storm.
Her eyes, trained to spot imperfections in tablecloths and dirty collars, were now lost on the road in the distance. A funeral procession passed slowly down the main street, headlights cutting through the gray afternoon like ghostly eyes. Black cars, shiny and solemn. She watched the indistinct figures emerging from the vehicles, black umbrellas blooming like dark fungi under the downpour. She could imagine the Italian leather shoes and modest heels filling with ice-cold water, the mud staining the performative dignity of suburban mourning.
It all seemed so... theatrical. So sad and inevitable. Life in Hawkins was a long procession of obligations, where you walked in the rain, got your feet wet, and pretended you didn't feel the cold.
Karen took a long sip of wine. The liquid went down warm, but not enough to ward off the chill that the lyrics of that imaginary song brought to her mind: Maybe I was too young... The smell of wet earth rose up, violent and raw. It didn't smell like the Wheelers' chemical lawn. It smelled like the forest. It smelled like 1959.
Hawkins, Indiana — 1959.
The rain beat against the roof of the ’55 Chevy as if it wanted to dent the metal. The world outside was a blur of water and darkness, but inside, the fogged-up windows created a sanctuary.
“You worry too much, Childress,” Joyce’s voice was raspy, amused, cutting through the sound of the storm.
Karen, her blonde hair not yet tamed by excessive hairspray but slightly damp and wavy, laughed. It was a genuine sound, something she would unlearn how to do years later.
“And you worry too little, Maldonado. Someone has to have some sense here. If my father finds out we’re here...”
“If, if, if...” Joyce leaned in. She smelled of rain, peppermint gum, and the smoke of the cigarette they had shared. “Forget the ‘if.’ Look at me.”
Joyce held Karen’s face. Her hands were small, restless, but in that moment, steady. There was an electricity between them that made the air inside the car feel thin.
“When we graduate, we’re getting out of here, Karen,” Joyce whispered, her eyes shining with a faith that hurt because it was so naive. “Me and you. We’re going to the big city. We’re going to be artists, or... I don’t know, anything other than ‘someone’s wife.’ Promise?”
Karen felt her heart beating in her throat. She was seventeen. The world seemed vast and terrifying, but with Joyce’s hand on the nape of her neck, pulling her into a desperate and secret kiss, it seemed conquerable.
“I promise...” Karen lied. Or perhaps, in that second, it was the truth.
They kissed while the rain tried to drown the world outside. It was a good love. It was a right love. But they were just children playing at eternity in a borrowed car.
Hawkins, Indiana — 1986.
A clap of thunder shook the windows of the large, empty house, pulling Karen back to reality. The ’55 Chevy no longer existed. The promise had evaporated like mist. Joyce had become the "town crazy," and Karen, the "queen of the suburbs." Divergent paths paved with safe choices and shoes full of cold water.
She looked at the bottom of her wine glass.
“Joyce...” the word came out as a whisper, muffled by the sound of the rain.
Karen pressed the cardigan against her chest. Tonight, with the rain falling on the living and the dead, the memory of Joyce was not a passing visit. It was a haunting. And Karen, for the first time in years, didn't want to turn on the light to chase it away.
A few blocks from the Wheeler residence, the neon sign of Melvald’s buzzed with an electric, irritating sound, flashing a red "OPEN" that lied to the deserted street. Joyce Byers turned the key in the glass door lock, locking the world out, but failing to lock out the exhaustion that seemed to live in her bones. She rested her forehead against the cold glass. The reflection staring back at her was pale, with dark circles like bruises under anxious eyes.
"Broken" wasn't a strong enough word. Joyce felt eroded. Eroded by years of worry for Will, by the overdue bills scattered on the counter, by the ghost of Lonnie, and the absence of Bob. She felt like one of those old wooden houses on the edge of town, creaking with every strong wind, but too stubborn to collapse.
But there was something worse than the tiredness. It was the hunger. Not the hunger a vending machine sandwich could solve. It was an ancient hunger, lodged in her chest. A hunger to be seen, not as the "worried mother" or the "crazy magnet lady," but as herself. As the theater girl who dreamed of New York.
She walked through the empty aisles of the store, running her calloused hands over the shelves of cheap products. How do you feed a love that died of starvation decades ago? How do you satiate the desire to touch skin that is now covered in silk and pearls, untouchable behind the manicured walls of a luxury subdivision?
Joyce stopped in the cosmetics aisle. There was a bottle of cheap perfume there, a poor imitation of roses. The scent invaded her nostrils and, for a cruel second, it wasn't the smell of cheap alcohol she smelled, but the scent of Karen’s neck on that night in 1959.
It was a dead end. There was no way to feed that feeling without destroying the perfectly constructed life Karen now inhabited. Joyce had only memories, and memories don't fill a belly nor warm a bed.
She turned off the main lights of the store, plunging it into gloom. Joyce looked north, in the direction where the houses got bigger and the streets cleaner.
“Where are you, Childress?” she murmured to the darkness of the store.
She wasn't asking for Mrs. Wheeler, the woman who presided over the school board and wore matching swimsuits at the public pool. Joyce was asking for the version she fell in love with. For the girl with wide eyes and an easy laugh who promised to run away with her. Did that girl still exist beneath the layers of hairspray and suburban perfection? Or had she drowned in the rain, abandoned like a broken doll?
Joyce lit a cigarette, the lighter flame briefly illuminating her tired face. The smoke rose, gray and lonely. She knew where Karen was physically. But her Karen... she was lost somewhere in time, and Joyce, with all her strength, didn't have a map to find her.
The silence of the Wheeler residence was oppressive. Ever since Nancy and Mike had moved to bigger cities to start their university lives, the silence was usually torn when Holly arrived with her friends to play D&D. But tonight, the silence was never broken, Holly was at Derek’s house, having a movie night with her other friends from school. The silence on this rainy night was interrupted only by the metallic tick-tock of the wall clock and the rhythmic, empty snoring of Ted beside her.
Karen lay with her eyes open, staring at the textured ceiling where the shadows of the trees danced like accusing fingers. She felt trapped in a time rift. In 1959, she had been too cowardly, too young to sustain the weight of a love that defied the gravity of Hawkins. And now? Now she felt too old to burn it all down. Her roots had grown too deep in the infertile soil of this town; if she tried to run now, her legs would break.
Lying in bed, Karen turned on her side, observing Ted’s profile in the dim light. But she didn't see her husband. She saw herself. She thought of all the times she let herself be carried away by middle-class distractions—the garden parties, the kitchen renovations, the gossip at the pool. She sought this anesthetic "fun", convincing herself that this was happiness. She used the status of "Mrs. Wheeler" as a shield, while Joyce Byers fought the world alone.
Karen felt a pang of nausea. She had been blind. Blinded by the shine of her own silverware. She never stopped to think about the damage she caused Joyce when she cut contact, when she pretended that summer never happened, when she passed her in the market and only gave a cold, neighborly wave. She had killed the Joyce of 1959 so that the Karen of 1986 could live in peace.
But peace was a desert.
She reached out into the darkness, her fingertips grazing the Egyptian cotton sheet. Ted was inches away, but it was as if there were an ocean between them. Her children were each following their own path. Her friends were mirrors of her own falseness. No one knew her. No one touched her where it hurt.
In that darkness, realization fell upon her like a sentence: she had built a life where nothing could go wrong, only to discover that nothing was real. She had everything the "American Dream" promised, and yet, waking up at three in the morning with the taste of wine and regret in her mouth, she discovered she had no one.
Only the ghost of a woman she abandoned in a car in the rain, a lifetime ago.
The rain had slowed to a fine drizzle, but the cold in Hawkins was now cutting, the kind that enters through the cracks of poorly sealed windows. Joyce had already returned home, which was now too quiet since Jonathan and Will went to follow their university paths, since the loss of Jane, and since the breakup with Hopper. She was sitting on the porch step, wrapped in a threadbare blanket that smelled of mold and cheap detergent.
She had a lit cigarette between her fingers, but she wasn't smoking. She just watched the red ember be consumed slowly, a small point of light in the middle of nowhere. Joyce had always been good at burning. She burned for the husband who didn't love her, burned for the children the world tried to take from her, and burned, silently, for a promise made in 1959. She was the flame that never went out, even when the fuel was only her own pain.
Joyce leaned against the side of the stair railing, arms crossed tight against her chest to ward off the night dew. Her eyes followed the continuous line of the asphalt to the point where the streetlights failed and the darkness of the forest swallowed the road. She was always waiting. In the back of every thought, in the interval of every tired sigh, there was a small part of her that was still that girl in the back seat of the Chevy, waiting for the door to open and for Karen to appear, ready to run away with her.
But now, the silence of Hawkins was deafening. She let out a short, bitter laugh that turned into a cloud of vapor in the cold air. She looked around at the silent houses and the trees that seemed to keep secrets too old to be borne.
“What am I still doing here?” she whispered to the void.
It wasn't about wanting to leave out of fear; it was about the strange perception that the threads tying her to this town had become invisible. The children were growing up, the supernatural crises had left scars that new asphalt couldn't hide, and the house... the house seemed just a set of walls full of memories that hurt more than they comforted.
Hawkins owed her nothing, and she certainly owed nothing more to the town.
She knew it was pathetic. A woman of her age, with so many real scars on her body and soul, still waiting for a blonde ghost wearing pearl necklaces. Someone who pretended every time they met, who sustained a mask of perfection while Joyce disintegrated. The most painful thing wasn't the absence, but the awareness that they didn't even have a past together, just fragments, glances, and the echo of something that was never allowed to exist.
A little ways away, at the Wheeler residence, rising silently from the bed, the room remained impeccable, like a magazine photograph no one dares to touch; Ted hadn't even noticed her absence. The sheets were stretched with surgical precision, without a single crease to betray the life that should happen there. But Karen Wheeler felt like a corpse in a luxury mausoleum.
In an act of silent rebellion, she threw open the double-paned window. The freezing air and rain entered without asking permission, soaking the expensive lace curtain, staining the floral wallpaper. Karen didn't care. She needed to feel something that wasn't the suffocation of central heating.
She lay back down on the made bed, beside the man she was supposed to love, but her body did not rest. She tossed and turned, the silk of her nightgown rubbing against her skin like sandpaper. Her muscles ached with an ancient hunger. It was a physical agony, a tension starting at the nape of her neck and ending at the tips of her toes. Sleep was a privilege of the innocent or the indifferent, and Karen was no longer either.
Her mind, then, began to dismantle the present, reconstructing the past with hallucinogenic intensity. She closed her eyes and, for a second, it wasn't the Hawkins rain she heard, but Joyce’s breathing. She would give everything. She would give the two-story house, the joint bank account, the social prestige, and every piece of jewelry kept in the vanity for just one moment back in that raw simplicity. A kiss on Joyce’s shoulder, where the skin was warm and smelled of real life.
Karen remembered a Sunday afternoon, hidden behind the Maldonados' shed, where the summer sun was the only judge. She remembered sleeping with her face against Joyce’s ribs, feeling the beating of her heart, a rhythm that made more sense than any Sunday sermon. Her current "riches" seemed like ashes compared to the gold of that smile. Joyce’s laugh. It was ungoverned, too loud, too urgent. Karen would trade every drop of her blue suburban blood to hear it one last time without the filter of bitterness. Joyce wasn't just a memory; she was an open wound that Karen refused to let heal. A constant tear, suspended in the soul, preventing her from seeing the world as other women saw it.
Karen stood up on impulse, her chest rising and falling. She looked at herself in the vanity mirror and didn't see the beauty everyone praised. She saw a woman who had been deaf to the pleas of her own heart, mute before the injustice of time, and blind to the trail of destruction she left in Joyce’s life by choosing safety over truth.
She grabbed her coat. Not the Sunday one, but an old, dark one. She was no longer too young to hold on to what remained. And, for the first time, she didn't feel too old to run away. The damage was done, yes. But the car keys were in her hand, and the road to the Byers' house had never seemed so short and, at the same time, so infinite.
Suddenly, the sound of tires crushing wet gravel echoed through the silent road. Joyce stood static. Her heart gave a violent jolt against her ribs, a frantic rhythm she hadn't felt in decades. Headlights cut through the fog, painting the porch a blinding yellow. It was an elegant car, too expensive for that neighborhood, out of place among the twisted trees and humble houses.
The engine turned off, but the lights stayed on, framing the silhouette of someone behind the wheel. Joyce didn't move. She couldn't. She was afraid that if she made any sudden movement, the vision would dissipate like the smoke from her cigarette.
The car door opened. And there, under the weak light of the streetlamp, was Karen. Not Mrs. Wheeler with her impeccable hairstyle; she looked undone. Her blonde hair, always so structured, now fell in short, disordered strands plastered to her face by the humidity. Her thin nightgown, completely soaked by the fine rain, molded to her body like a second skin, covered only by a random coat trying to ward off the night chill, revealing the fragility she tried to hide under layers of sophistication.
Karen’s car door slammed with a sound muffled by the dampness. She walked through the mud, expensive shoes being ruined with every step, but there was no hesitation. When she reached the porch steps, the yellow light of the external bulb revealed Joyce, small, wrapped in blankets, with large, moist eyes reflecting decades of secrets.
Joyce stood up. She didn't seem surprised. It was as if she had been waiting for that pair of headlights since the world began. Joyce dropped the cigarette. The ember died on the damp wood of the porch.
“You took your time...” Joyce said, her voice failing, but charged with an urgency that crossed the twenty-seven years of silence between them. Because, despite everything, despite the ruined lives and lost time, it still wasn't too late to rekindle the flames of an old love.
The silence between them wasn't empty; it was dense, filled with every word unspoken at family dinners, every averted gaze in the town center, every night both stared at the ceiling imagining "what if?".
Joyce walked forward slowly. The blanket slipped from her shoulders, revealing the tremor in her hands.
“I left the light on, Karen...” Joyce’s voice came out broken, a whisper carrying the weight of a thousand lonely nights. “Do you know how long it’s been?” Joyce’s voice wasn't a scream, it was something much worse, a hoarse lament, worn out from being repeated in the dark. “For twenty-seven years. Even when I hated you, even when I tried to love other men and even other women, a part of me was sitting here, exactly on this step, waiting for the sound of this engine. Do you have any idea how many times I looked at that road and saw your face in every shadow, in every car light that passed and didn't stop?”
Karen stopped an inch away. Karen’s scent of roses mixed with the smell of tobacco and rain on Joyce.
“Joyce, I...”
“No!” Joyce interrupted, taking a step forward, closing the space, her hands rising to touch Karen’s cold face. “Do you have any idea what it is to wait for so long? I waited for you in the summer of '60, in the winter of '75... I waited for you in every damn crisis this town had. I always thought you would come. That you would get tired of the pearls and Ted’s silence and would remember that my heart was the only place where you could breathe.”
Joyce was crying now, but it wasn't a cry of sadness; it was the relief of a dam breaking. Joyce was now millimeters from her. She held Karen’s face with both hands, hands that smelled of tobacco, hard work, and a life Karen never had the audacity to live. She held Karen’s face with a desperate possessiveness, her thumbs tracing the fine lines around the other woman's eyes, marks of time they should have spent together.
“I waited for you,” Joyce admitted in a whisper, the tears finally conquering the barrier of her eyes. “In every cigarette I lit, in every stormy night I couldn't sleep... I was waiting for you to come back. I was waiting for you to tell me the promise was still real.”
Karen closed her eyes, feeling the heat of Joyce’s hands against her freezing skin. It was the most violent contrast she had ever felt, the death of her old life against the pulsing life Joyce offered.
“You should have come sooner...” Joyce sobbed, resting her forehead against Karen’s. “You should have come when we were still young and the world hadn't broken us so much.”
Joyce held Karen’s face with a strength that bordered on desperation. Her eyes were live coals, accusing, burning through every layer of denial Karen had built over the last twenty-seven years.
“I was out here, Karen!” Joyce hissed, her voice cracking. “I spent decades being the crazy woman, the tired woman, while you pretended that summer in '59 was a youthful outburst... while you hid behind a last name and a life that—”
Karen didn't let her finish. In an impulsive movement, clumsy and violent as lightning, Karen surged forward. She didn't think about etiquette, didn't think about Ted, didn't think about the children or the scandal. She just needed the sound of that pain to stop. She silenced Joyce with a kiss that tasted of the metallic rain and the suffocating heat of a lifetime of repression.
The impact made Joyce stumble back a step, her back hitting the wooden wall of the house, but Karen didn't let go. On the contrary, she pressed herself against Joyce, hands tangling in the other woman's damp, tangled hair, begging for a connection that was real, no matter how much it hurt.
Joyce froze for a second, the shock paralyzing her lungs. But then, the armor of fury she carried like a shield simply... crumbled. Her hands, which before held Karen’s face with rigidity, relaxed, fingers getting lost in the wet fabric of Karen’s coat.
The kiss wasn't gentle. It was a shipwreck.
In the middle of the kiss, between panting breaths and the desperate touch of lips, Joyce didn't stop speaking, but her tone changed. It was no longer an accusation; it was a naked confession, murmured against Karen’s mouth, between hungry caresses.
“I hated you...” Joyce whispered against her lips, her voice fading as her teeth grazed Karen’s skin. “I swore I wouldn't let you in... I swore I’d send you away the first time you stepped on this porch...”
Karen kissed her harder, a sob escaping her throat.
“But I can’t...” Joyce continued, words mixing with the sound of kisses, her voice now soft, vulnerable, without the weight of the "strong woman" mask. Joyce pulled her face back just a few millimeters, enough for their eyes to meet in the humid gloom. She seemed smaller now, more fragile, without the defenses Hawkins had forced her to build.
“Don’t leave again,” Joyce pleaded, her voice so low it was almost lost in the sound of the drizzle. “Don’t make me be the only one who remembers us again. I can’t take another decade of silence.”
Karen felt the last remnant of her life in Hawkins evaporate. There, in the arms of the woman she neglected, "perfection" no longer mattered. She touched the tip of her nose to Joyce’s, tears washing away the perfect makeup, revealing the woman she should have been since 1959.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Karen promised, and this time, for the first time in her life, it wasn't a suburban lie. “Never again.”
Under the weak light and the sound of music that seemed to emanate from the wet asphalt itself, the two became a single shadow against the Byers' door. The wait was over. The rain was no longer an invader; it was the baptism of a new era. There, under the eaves of the Byers' house which creaked like an old ship, the phrase echoing in the silence between kisses was a verdict, a sustained note vibrating in the cold air:
Lover, you should've come over... 'cause it's not too late.
Karen tightened her fingers on Joyce’s shoulders, feeling the bone structure and reality of that woman under the soaked blanket. For years, Karen lived in a world of surfaces, marble, lacquer, silk, and polished skin. Touching Joyce now was like touching the earth itself: it was raw, it was irregular, it was honest. The "too late" was a ghost she had fed at silent dinners with Ted, but there, in the heat of Joyce’s breath against her neck, time seemed like a ridiculous illusion. Twenty-seven years were nothing before the electricity that still leapt between their skins.
Joyce, for her part, felt Karen’s armor dissolve into water. The woman who represented everything Hawkins demanded Joyce hate, perfection, order, complacency, was there, undone, with smeared makeup and pride in tatters. It wasn't too late because their love had never been a straight line; it was a ember hidden under deep ash. The wind of that night had simply blown the dirt away.
The kiss changed rhythm. It ceased to be a desperate shock and became a slow discovery. It was the recognition that bodies had changed, but the hunger was identical. Karen traced the line of Joyce’s jaw, memorizing the texture of maturity, while Joyce buried her face in the curve of Karen’s shoulder, finding the place where the scent of youth still stubbornly resided, hidden under expensive perfumes.
The world beyond that porch, the lights of Hawkins, the expectations, the weight of past mistakes, began to recede until it became a meaningless blur. The realization that "it wasn't too late" fell upon them with the force of a religious revelation. Life hadn't ended at forty or fifty; it was just beginning, there, in the middle of the mud and cold, in the promise of a door that would finally open for both of them.
“I came back, Joyce. I finally came back.” Karen brushed a strand of hair stuck to Joyce’s face and whispered, voice charged with an authority she never had before.
The transition from the porch to the interior of the house was a blur of urgency. When the door closed, the sound of the storm was replaced by the muffled silence of the living room, but the real storm was now between the two of them. Karen didn't wait. She pushed Joyce against the wood of the door, eager hands descending down her back, feeling every curve time had sculpted.
“The bedroom!” Joyce gasped against Karen’s neck, hands guiding her down the dark hallway.
When they entered Joyce’s room, there was none of the sterile elegance of the Wheeler house. The environment was charged with real life, with tiredness, and an intimacy Karen had never allowed herself to have. Joyce barely had time to turn on a dim lamp before being engulfed again. Karen undressed her with a hunger that bordered on fury. Every piece of Joyce’s clothing that fell was a veil of bitterness being removed.
When their skins finally touched, without barriers, the thermal shock made Joyce release a sound that was half moan, half sob. Karen took her to the bed with a possessive force, positioning herself over her, eyes fixed on Joyce’s, refusing to look away. Karen’s intensity was carnal, raw. She kissed her with a voracity that said everything decades of silence had hidden. Her hands roamed Joyce’s body thighs, hips, abdomen, with a new authority. Mrs. Wheeler was no longer there, there was only the woman who should have been the center of Joyce’s world since 1959.
When Karen finally possessed her, the act was charged with a depth that transcended the physical. Every movement was a blow against the past, a claiming of lost territory. Joyce arched beneath her, nails digging into Karen’s shoulders, finding the rhythm of a song both knew by heart but had never been allowed to dance to the end.
“I love you,” Karen whispered, voice hoarse, lips brushing Joyce’s ear as she moved with absolute surrender. “I am here, Maldonado.”
Karen fucked her with an emotional exhaustion that transformed into physical vigor. She wanted Joyce to feel the weight of her truth, to feel how exhausted she was from pretending, how much she hated every day spent away from that modest room and that indomitable woman. She wasn't just giving pleasure; she was delivering her soul in every touch, in every heavy breath filling the stifling air.
Joyce lost herself in the sensation, legs wrapping around Karen’s waist, pulling her closer, wanting them to merge until there was no distinction between who was the fugitive and who was the one waiting. The room was bathed in amber gloom, and the sound of rain beating on the zinc roof served as the only metronome for the urgent rhythm of their bodies. There was no room for rehearsed delicacies; what happened between them was a collision of decades of repression.
The air in Joyce’s room was saturated, heavy with the smell of sweat, rain, and an electricity finally finding its ground wire. Karen didn't move with the hesitation of someone discovering a new body; she moved with the fury of someone recovering territory that was hers by right and by destiny.
Karen kept herself on top, knees pressing into the mattress on either side of Joyce’s hips, creating an anchor of weight and presence. She held Joyce’s wrists above her head, pinning them against the pillow with one hand, a display of dominance that made Joyce’s pulse race against her palm. Karen’s intensity was now purely motor, a mechanism of passion leaving no room for subtleties. Joyce’s small, stifling room became the epicenter of total physical liberation. Karen wasn't just making love; she was purging decades of repression through every inch of her skin.
Karen pinned Joyce’s legs over her own shoulders, opening her completely, eliminating any distance or barrier. She dove between Joyce’s thighs with a hungry urgency, hands splayed against the mattress to give leverage to every thrust of her body. The sound of flesh slapping against flesh was rhythmic, raw, and honest, drowning out the noise of the rain outside.
“You are mine, Joyce... do you feel that?” Karen gasped, sweat dripping from her face.
Karen worked with fingers and mouth simultaneously, a visceral coordination seeking to push Joyce to the limit of endurance. She buried two fingers deep, feeling Joyce’s pulsing heat and excessive wetness, while using her thumb to press the center of that pleasure with rhythmic and relentless force. She didn't stop; she increased the speed, short, potent movements making the iron bed creak against the wooden floor.
Joyce was in a trance, hands clutching the sheets as if hanging from a cliff. She felt every thrust of Karen’s fingers like an electric shock running down her spine.
“More, baby... please, don't stop,” Joyce pleaded, body arched, chest rising and falling in spasms.
Karen responded by intensifying the contact. She lowered her body, rubbing against Joyce with firm pressure, seeking the skin-on-skin friction that set them on fire. She bit Joyce’s inner thigh, leaving a vivid mark, while her free hand moved up to squeeze Joyce’s breast, feeling the other woman's heart hammer against her palm. It was absolute possession; Karen occupied every sense of Joyce, every inch of her space, every breath she tried to take.
The rhythm became frantic. Karen gave no quarter, moving her hand in a continuous, rapid motion, feeling Joyce tremble and contract around her fingers. She could feel Joyce’s climax arriving, a tension running down the other woman's legs to her toes.
“Scream my name, Joyce!” Karen commanded, voice hoarse, burying her face in the curve of her neck, smelling salt and desire. “Let Hawkins know you belong to me.”
When the wave finally broke, it was devastating. Joyce locked her body, nails digging into Karen’s forearms as a long, unarmed scream escaped her throat. Karen continued to move against her, maintaining the stimulation even during the peak, prolonging every spasm, every contraction, until Joyce was completely exhausted and trembling beneath her.
Karen collapsed, face hidden in Joyce’s hair, both panting, bodies fused by sweat and exhaustion. There was nothing left to hide. There, in the silence that followed the raw pleasure, "Mrs. Wheeler" had finally ceased to exist, giving way only to the woman who loved Joyce Byers with a hunger time never managed to satiate.
“Did you miss this?” Karen asked, voice vibrating low, almost a growl, as she lowered her face to bite the line of Joyce’s shoulder, leaving a red mark contrasting with the pale skin.
“I did...” Joyce gasped, her entire body tensing when Karen initiated a slow, circular, excruciating hip movement, pressing the exact spot where electricity turned into fire. “Karen, please...”
But Karen was in no hurry. She wanted Joyce to feel every inch of the damage time couldn't erase. With her free hand, Karen moved down Joyce’s abdomen, fingers tracing marks left by life and motherhood, until diving between her legs. She found Joyce already flooded with desire, an immediate reflex to that overwhelming presence.
Karen began to use her again, with aggressive dexterity. Her fingers worked with rhythmic urgency, while the weight of her body continued to press Joyce against the mattress, preventing any escape. With every thrust of her fingers, Karen watched Joyce’s face come undone, eyes rolling back, mouth parted in search of oxygen that seemed to have run out in the room.
“Look at me,” Karen ordered again, leaning in to bite Joyce’s earlobe before whispering, “I won’t stop until you forget the name of anyone else who ever touched you. I want my face to be the only thing you see when you close your eyes.”
Karen increased the speed, the sound of their bodies impacting and the wet movement of her hands filling the silence between the thunderclaps outside. Joyce arched her back, chest rising and falling frantically, legs trembling as she tried to cling to Karen.
“I love you so much it hurts, my love.” Karen said, and this time it wasn't a whisper; it was a declaration of war against the past. She plunged two fingers deeper, finding the perfect rhythm that made Joyce lose her breath and her mind. “I spent twenty years wanting to do this. Twenty years wanting to hear you scream my name like this.”
When the climax hit Joyce again, it was violent. Her body shook in long, involuntary spasms under Karen’s command. Joyce screamed, the sound muffled by the hungry kiss Karen gave her at the exact moment of the explosion, drinking her breath and pleasure as if it were the only source of life in Hawkins.
Karen continued to move against her for a few seconds after the peak, savoring Joyce’s contractions, before finally relaxing her weight on the other woman. They lay there, hearts beating in frantic unison, sweat gluing their bodies together as steam rose from their skin under the dim lamplight.
The atmosphere in the room had changed. Karen’s frantic urgency met a barrier of soft but unshakable resistance when Joyce’s hands, calloused and firm, moved up to the blonde’s shoulders and pushed her back. Joyce didn't just want relief; she wanted Karen’s soul, and she wanted her to know exactly to whom it belonged.
With an agile, visceral movement, Joyce reversed their positions. Karen’s world spun for a brief second until she felt the firmness of the mattress against her back. Now, it was she who was pinned, blonde hair, once so meticulously tamed, now spread under her head like a silk halo in complete disorder. Joyce knelt over her, a hungry, powerful shadow filling all the space between breath and desire.
The silence of the room was replaced by the sound of heavy breathing from both. Joyce didn't move immediately; instead, she leaned her body, letting her eyes roam every detail of Karen’s face with an intensity bordering on reverence. She reached out, rough fingers touching the short, damp ends of Karen’s hair. There was a flash of genuine admiration in Joyce’s gaze, something she had been stifling for years.
“You changed...” Joyce whispered, voice hoarse, almost a secret. She ran her thumb along Karen’s jawline, moving up to the nape where the cut was closer. “This hair... it leaves you exposed. Makes you freer, more real.”
Joyce smiled, a small smile charged with fierce tenderness, while her eyes shone under the dim light. “It looks perfect on you, Karen. It’s the first time I can really see you, with nothing in the way.”
Karen shivered under the touch, not from fear, but from the impact of being seen that way. Joyce wasn't just complimenting a haircut; she was celebrating the fall of the last barrier separating them.
The room was plunged in dense gloom, broken only by the reflection of rain on the glass. With a delicacy contrasting with the urgency in her chest, Joyce took the hem of the silk nightgown, soaked and cold. She lifted it slowly, revealing Karen’s skin inch by inch. When the fabric finally passed over her head and was discarded, Joyce froze. The air fled her lungs.
Karen was completely naked underneath; the absence of panties was silent testimony that she had left home in a state of absolute desperation, stripped of any pretense. But it wasn't just the nudity that paralyzed Joyce. Under the pale light, scars jumped out, deep, pale furrows winding across her left breast, climbing up her shoulder and dying in the curve of her neck. Claw marks, the permanent trail of the Demogorgon.
Karen shrank her shoulders, an instinctive reaction of shame. She tried to cover her chest with her hands, eyes tearing up as she met Joyce’s gaze.
“Don’t look...” Karen whispered, voice broken. “It’s horrible.”
Joyce felt a pang of fury at how Karen saw herself, but transmuted it into adoration. She held Karen’s wrists firmly, but without hurting, moving her hands away to expose the marks again.
“Horrible?” Joyce repeated, voice vibrating with emotion. “Darling, this here is the map of your return. You faced what most people can't even imagine and you are still here.”
Joyce leaned in, face inches from the scars. With almost religious reverence, she pressed her lips to the deepest mark on Karen’s breast. The kiss was warm, long, and charged with an acceptance Karen had never known.
“I don’t see anything horrible...” Joyce murmured against her skin, kisses moving up her shoulder to her neck, where Karen’s pulse beat frantically. “I see the most beautiful, brave woman I have ever known. I adore every inch of this.”
Karen let out a low sob, but this time it wasn't from pain. It was the sound of armor falling. She relaxed against the mattress, fingers burying into the sheets as she let Joyce take possession of her history and her body.
It was then that Joyce pulled back just enough to face her, dark eyes shining with renewed hunger, now that there were no more secrets between them. The air between the two seemed to gain weight, static electricity making the short strands of Karen’s hair stand on end. Joyce didn't look away; she sustained Karen’s scrutiny with a confidence that never needed pearls or expensive dresses to exist.
“Well, now it’s my turn, my darling.” Joyce whispered, voice charged with a dangerous promise, vibrating so low Karen felt it more in her chest than in her ears.
Slowly, without haste and without breaking eye contact, Joyce brought her hands to the nape of her neck. Karen watched, hypnotized, as Joyce’s agile fingers gathered her own dark, rebellious strands. With a practical movement, she pinned her hair high on her head, leaving her neck exposed and face totally free of shadows. That simple gesture was a sign of war and surrender. Joyce was no longer hiding behind nervous locks; she was clearing the path.
Karen felt her throat go dry. There was something visceral in the way Joyce prepared herself, like a predator who finally decided the wait was over. The admiration Joyce had felt for Karen’s cut now transformed into tangible hunger. Joyce leaned her body forward, hands now descending to the mattress, surrounding Karen’s body, trapping her in a cocoon of heat and intention. She was no longer the exhausted woman of Hawkins; she was a force of nature about to claim what was hers.
Joyce began to claim the territory denied to her for almost thirty years. She was in no hurry; slowness was her weapon, a precise balance between torture and absolute pleasure. She lowered her face to Karen’s neck, but didn't seek the smooth, untouched skin. Instead, her lips traced the path of the scars, climbing from breast to shoulder with fierce possessiveness. Joyce stopped where the scar tissue met soft skin, just below the ear, and there she offered not a kiss, but a bite.
Her teeth sank in with deliberate force, mixing the irregular texture of the Demogorgon’s mark with the new mark she was creating herself. It was a purplish seal of possession, a stain of life superimposed on the stain of trauma, which Karen would carry back into the daylight, marking Karen in a way no pearl necklace could hide. It was a purplish seal of possession, a living mark superimposed on the dead marks of the past.
Joyce was claiming every inch of that woman, the part that shone at neighborhood dinners and, especially, the part carrying the monster's marks.
“Let them see...” Joyce murmured against the marked skin, her hoarse voice vibrating over the furrows in Karen’s shoulder. “They make you even more beautiful.”
She pressed her lips against Karen’s scars, feeling the other’s frantic heartbeat under her lips, transforming what used to be Karen’s biggest secret into her private altar. Joyce looked up, hands pinning Karen’s wrists above her head, forcing her to face the reality of what was happening. She was kissing the scars not to heal them, but to integrate them into desire, transforming what was once a source of shame into a feast for her hunger.
“You are mine, Karen Wheeler.” When pronouncing Ted’s surname, Joyce’s voice carried a trace of bitterness, a reminder of the man who occupied the place that should have been hers. She felt Karen shiver under her weight, a silent protest against the name chaining her to that empty life.
Joyce pulled away just enough to look deep into Karen’s cloudy, amber eyes. She ran her thumb over the blonde’s lower lip, pulling it down slightly, before letting out a breathy laugh, almost a confession.
“But you know what?” Joyce continued, gaze softening, rescuing the memory of the girl Karen was before getting lost in the suburbs. “Karen Maldonado... that suits you much better.”
The impact of those words was stronger than any physical touch. By giving Karen her own maiden name, Joyce was erasing Ted, erasing Hawkins, and baptizing Karen in her own lineage of resistance and passion. It was as if she were saying Karen finally belonged to the place she should never have left.
“Every inch of this body you tried to hide in expensive dresses... belongs to me now.”
Joyce moved the kiss down slowly, each touch a torment. She traced the contour of Karen’s breasts with the tip of her tongue, stopping to bite and suck with unnerving calm, ignoring the low, desperate moans starting to escape the blonde. Karen tried to arch her body, seeking contact, seeking the end of that sweet agony, but Joyce kept her pinned with the weight of her own body.
“Joyce... please...” Karen begged, hips moving in search of friction, breath coming in sobs.
“Not yet.” Joyce replied, voice cold and hot at the same time.
She went lower, hands mapping Karen’s ribs and scars, fingertips pressing points where skin was most sensitive. Joyce stopped between Karen’s thighs but didn't deliver what she wanted. Instead, she used her tongue to trace slow, wet paths along the blonde’s inner thighs, moving up and down, approaching the center of Karen’s heat only to veer away at the last second.
Joyce’s torture was systematic. She wanted Karen to feel every nerve, every sensory ending anesthetized by years of suburban boredom. She kissed the skin of Karen’s belly, leaving teeth marks near the hip line, proclaiming her sovereignty over this woman the world thought it knew.
Karen was on the verge of collapse. Her body trembled, nails scratching Joyce’s back in a silent plea for mercy. "Not being able to hold back" was no longer a possibility, it was an inevitable reality.
“Say you belong to no one else.” Joyce commanded, moving her body up slowly, hands now splayed against Karen’s chest, feeling her heart beat like a caged bird.
“I am yours...” Karen screamed, voice failing, tears of frustration and desire running down her temples. “Only yours, Maldonado. Do something, I can’t take it anymore!”
Joyce held Karen’s ankles and pushed them up, exposing her completely, leaving her vulnerable under her hungry gaze.
“Look at what you did to me...” Joyce growled low.
She didn't ask permission. Joyce slid her hand down, fingers calloused by rough work contrasting shockingly with Karen’s silk and expensive creams. She invaded Karen with a firmness that made the blonde choke, eyes rolling back, back arching off the mattress. Joyce filled her slowly, dragging fingers against Karen’s inner walls, feeling how her body contracted, tight and hot, desperate to accommodate her. Joyce didn't just touch her, she occupied her.
Joyce began to move. The rhythm was calculated torture. She went deep, touching Karen’s most sensitive spot with cruel precision, and then withdrew almost completely, leaving Karen whimpering at the loss of contact, only to thrust again harder. The wet sound of sex, of skin slapping against skin, filled the room's silence, a raw soundtrack to that surrender.
Karen was undone. Her hands gripped the sheets, knuckles white, head thrown from side to side.
“Joyce... please... I need...” Karen stammered, incoherent, lost in the sensation of being possessed so completely.
Joyce stopped the movement abruptly, keeping her fingers buried deep inside her, feeling Karen’s frantic pulsation around her hand. She raised her torso, sweat making her skin shine, and held Karen’s chin with her free hand, forcing her to face her. Joyce’s eyes were dark pools of adoration and fury. Karen shook her head, tears flowing, hips trembling as she tried, in vain, to move against Joyce’s motionless hand.
Joyce smiled, a crooked, triumphant smile, and restarted the movement, deeper now, twisting her wrist in a way that made Karen scream, a sound that came from the soul. Joyce intensified the thrust, hitting against Karen’s pleasure point with merciless regularity, undoing any remaining resistance, filling Karen inch by inch, forcing the blonde to feel the invasion, to feel the texture of Joyce’s hand, the reality of that body inside hers.
Karen threw her head back, mouth open in a silent "O", eyes rolling as Joyce took possession of her. The room seemed to have run out of oxygen. The sound of rain outside was just white noise against the smack of skin and muffled moans filling the air. Karen was at the limit, body stretched like a violin string about to snap, Joyce’s fingers moving inside her with a relentless cadence driving her closer and closer to the abyss.
But, when Karen let out the first sharp cry, the moment her hips locked and the peak began to cloud her vision, Joyce stopped. She withdrew her fingers all at once. The sudden vacuum made Karen release a wail of pure frustration, wide, wet eyes seeking Joyce’s face in the gloom.
“Joyce... no... please...” Karen pleaded, voice failing, body trembling from the cruel interruption at the height of tension.
Joyce said not a word. She just gave a slow smile, a predatory look promising something much deeper. She held Karen’s thighs, opening them even wider, and lowered her body with a deliberation that made time stop. When Joyce’s mouth finally replaced the touch of her hand, Karen lost the ground beneath her.
It wasn't just a kiss. Joyce enveloped the center of Karen’s pleasure with warm, wet lips, using her tongue to trace slow, firm circles that made Karen make sounds she didn't know she was capable of producing. Joyce savored Karen, drinking the physical proof of the blonde’s desire as if it were the most expensive nectar in the world.
“You are delicious, my darling.” Joyce murmured against sensitive skin, the vibration of her voice sending electric shocks down the length of Karen’s spine.
Joyce intensified the contact, alternating deep suction with light caresses of her tongue tip, finding the exact rhythm Karen needed to be destroyed. She used her hands to squeeze Karen’s buttocks, pulling her closer, wanting to consume every drop of that surrender. Karen was beside herself. Her hands buried in Joyce’s hair, pulling, pushing, not knowing if she wanted her to stop or never let go. The contrast between the night’s chill and the volcanic heat of Joyce’s mouth was too much for her overloaded senses.
“I’m going to take you there, honey...” Joyce whispered, voice muffled by intimate contact. “...But you’re going to feel every second of it.”
Joyce dove again, now with seductive urgency, focusing all her attention on the spot that made Karen convulse. She used her tongue with aggressive dexterity, exploring every fold, every inch, until Karen’s body was nothing but a bundle of exposed nerves. The peak didn't come as a wave, it came as an explosion.
Karen screamed Joyce’s name, nails digging into the brunette's shoulders as her body collapsed. Joyce didn't pull away; she stayed there, firm, drinking Karen’s pleasure, sustaining her through long, violent spasms, ensuring "Mrs. Wheeler" died definitively under her tongue, giving way to the woman who, finally, belonged only to her.
“I am yours... Joyce! I am yours!” Karen screamed, voice breaking.
When the climax hit Karen again, it was annihilation. She contracted violently around Joyce’s fingers, screaming her name, body convulsing in waves of pleasure that seemed endless. The room was wrapped in heavy silence, broken only by Karen’s noisy breathing, lungs still fighting to find rhythm after that devastating peak.
Joyce gave no time for gravity to separate them. With an agile movement, she climbed up her body, sliding over Karen’s sweaty skin like a shadow returning to claim its owner. Karen lay with eyes closed, head thrown back, neck exposing frantic pulsation. Joyce held her by the chin, forcing her to open her eyes and focus on the raw reality of that room.
“Don’t look away now,” Joyce murmured, voice like rough velvet. “Feel this. Feel how tasty you are.”
Joyce leaned in and captured Karen’s lips in a kiss that was anything but delicate. It was a deep, exploratory kiss, charged with the humidity and heat of what had just happened. Karen let out a low sound, a mix of surprise and surrender, when she felt on the tip of Joyce’s tongue the sweet and salty trace of her own essence. Joyce kissed her with seductive intensity, moving her mouth slowly so Karen wouldn't miss a single detail. It was a complete cycle of possession: Karen tasting her own desire mediated by Joyce’s mouth, a physical communion eliminating any trace of the "perfect wife" of Hawkins.
“This is your taste, Karen,” Joyce whispered against her lips, between short kisses and light bites making the blonde shiver.
Joyce’s hands, still firm, moved down to interlace fingers with Karen’s, pressing them against the pillow. She continued to kiss her, drinking every sigh from Karen, savoring the mixture of their fluids as if it were the final seal of a contract time could never break. Karen felt Joyce’s weight upon her, the heat of the brunette's body fusing to hers, and the taste of her own surrender in her mouth. There was no more room for disgust, guilt, or fear. Under Joyce’s command, Karen learned to love even her own lust.
“I love you,” Joyce declared, voice hoarse, without any trace of doubt or fear. “Not the image you sold, not the woman with the pearl necklace. I love this woman here, with these scars and this fire you tried to put out for so long. You are all mine, Karen. Finally.”
The sound of the words seemed to echo through the room more than any scream. Karen, trapped between the mattress and Joyce’s intensity, felt the weight of thirty years of silence crumble under that confession. There were no more blonde ghosts or pretending; there was only the naked, marked truth Joyce now held with her hands and heart. Karen Maldonado closed her eyes, pulling Joyce for one more kiss, accepting finally that her kingdom of glass hadn't just fallen, but had been replaced by something much more solid, warm, and eternal.
Joyce pulled the blanket over their sweaty, exhausted bodies, accommodating Karen in her embrace. The blonde rested her head on Joyce’s chest, listening to the brunette's heart slow down until finding a rhythm of peace Karen hadn't felt in decades. Joyce stroked Karen’s blonde hair, fingers tracing smooth paths across her forehead, pushing away damp strands with a delicacy that said what words couldn't reach.
“I won’t let you run away again,” Joyce whispered, voice sweet now, losing all the roughness of the earlier possessiveness.
Karen lifted her face, amber eyes reflecting the soft lamp light, clean of any shadow of Hawkins. She reached out and touched Joyce’s face, feeling the texture of the skin of the woman who saved her from herself.
“It took a whole lifetime for me to cross that road, Joyce,” Karen replied, voice fragile and charged with love. “But I finally understood. My home was never that big house. My home was this right here. It was you.”
Joyce smiled, that tired, genuine smile Karen had loved since 1959, and kissed the blonde’s forehead, right there, where peace was beginning to bloom. They intertwined under the sheets, feet seeking each other, hands held like two teenagers who just discovered the universe in one another.
Time, which had been a cruel enemy for twenty-seven years, finally stopped running. In that modest room, surrounded by memories and scars, there was no past or future. There was only the present, warm and eternal.
Outside, the rain continued to weep against the windowpane, a funereal song for the wasted years, but in the warmth of that bed, the silence was no longer a death march. Karen's surrender to Joyce's embrace, her body finally relaxing against the woman who was her only truth, proved that the love which withstands cowardice and time is invincible. Just as the song of a rough-voiced poet left its legacy to us, the distance had been immense, and the waiting, atrocious, but the love had finally crossed the road. Against the cruel mathematics of time, and against all the lies ever told, it was not, and would never be, too late.