something_incredible | (no subject)

Ten days. He's been in this city for ten days and no route he's tried to take out of here has gotten him anywhere.

Anyone who's been here longer than a week had told him as much, but he figures he can't be blamed for not just blindly accepting there's no going home and at least giving it a shot. Nothing he does gets him anywhere, though, nowhere but here. It's strange, but he can deal with strange, somehow strange has become familiar in the past year and a half. It's not the strange that bothers him. It's not even that his apartment building is haunted that bothers him. (He's seen her only once, but he'd seen her. Clear as day.)

It's being without the rest of them.

Having Steve here is a comfort. It's another bit of familiarity, but the face he really wants to see is Eleven's. Or Joyce. At this point, he'd even be happy to hear Dustin talking about dragons or letting Mike punch him a few more times for having kept Eleven away from him. Anything if it meant a bit of home. The only piece of home he has now is the blue hairband around his wrist and even that isn't the home he'd left in Hawkins.

It's the middle of Tuesday, almost February now, and he's out in the bright, clear sun. The apartment is too empty, he doesn't know what to do with it or with himself when he's inside, so he goes out and he walks. Too many times already he's stumbled back to the apartment drunk, but he still looks at the clock on his phone -- that's about the only thing he uses it for -- and tries to decide if it's too early for a drink. Just after one. Too early.

So instead of a bar, he heads for one of the streets lined with shops and small cafes. Maybe if he gets himself a coffee he can convince himself to stay sober for just a little while longer.

Turning toward one of the coffee shops he actually likes, one that feels comfortable and simple instead of something daunting where he has too many options for something as easy as coffee, he spots a familiar head of red hair. Lengthening his strides, he catches up to Bev in just a few moments and he asks, keeping his voice casual, "Aren't you supposed to be in school right about now?"

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"It depends," Beverly says, shrugging as she waits for her ball to come back up through the machine, shifting her weight a little restlessly. "There's a curfew, so as long as I'm back by then, that's fine, but if I'm going to be out later than that, or stay the night somewhere, I have to get someone to sign me out. They don't trust us that much." The last is a joke, though she supposes there's truth in it, too. It makes sense, of course. Kids probably shouldn't be left to run rampant and do whatever the fuck they want. She still, though, for all that she doesn't miss home at all, misses some of the freedom that came with being able to sneak out and do whatever the hell she wanted.

Picking her ball back up when it emerges, she balances it in one hand and then the other before gearing up to take her next shot. "Before you ask, no, I haven't tried sneaking out yet."

Hopper laughs and then raises his hands defensively and says, "Hey, I didn't ask." He had been ready to, though, not because she strikes him as the sort who would want to do that all the time, but because he wants to know if it's easy or not. Right now he's still not sure what he's going to do in this place long term, whether he's going to find himself back at the police department or follow some other road, but he's been a cop and a soldier for a long time. It's in his nature to be curious about things like that, to want to know how easy it is for someone to get out of something.

He would have been the father to make sure his daughter's bedroom window couldn't possibly be snuck into or out of.

"If you end up needing someone to sign you out just so you can get away for awhile, you can give me a shout," he tells her as she gets ready for her next shot. "Doesn't mean I'm not gonna ask some questions when you do, but I get it. Being around that many people would drive me up the damn wall."

"It's definitely weird," Beverly says, sending the ball rolling down the lane again, perching on her toes as she watches it. This time, it clips one pin, which teeters some before falling over, but she'll take it. At least it's better than embarrassing herself too completely on her first turn. Even if she had, she'd rather bowl a game with nothing but gutter balls than be in P.E. right now, so she supposes that, really, she wins either way. "And not exactly ideal. I mean, sometimes you just want a little privacy, you know?"

It's not like she's ungrateful, or like she doesn't recognize that she's lucky to have a place to stay at all with people who seem to genuinely mean well. That doesn't mean she wouldn't appreciate a break from being surrounded by other kids around her age, with whom she historically hasn't gotten along very well.

"But thanks," she adds, finding that she means it. "I'll keep that in mind."

"All right, kid, let me show you how it's done," Hopper says, getting up from his seat after she rolls her second ball and the lane is cleared. He has no idea if he's going to bowl any better than she did, but he sure as hell plans on making this a good time for the both of them and if he has to look like an idiot in order to do that, then so be it. It's not like he thinks he's above that in any way.

Being a dad kind of strips a man of his ego in a lot of ways.

"Me and Jane lived out in this cottage," he tells Beverly as he picks up a ball, then heads toward the lane, pausing at the line for a moment. He takes his time there, as if weighing his options, weighing the ball, shifting back and forth on his feet as he tries to find the right place to stand. He's making a show of it and it's entirely for Beverly's benefit. "It wasn't very big and even with just the two of us it could be close quarters. She got pissed at me one day and dragged the entire TV set into her bedroom so she could have a little bit of privacy. A place like the Home would drive that kid batshit, I think."

"God, yeah, sounds like," Beverly says, not entirely able to help the laugh she lets out at the story he tells. Probably it shouldn't be funny, when Jane must have gotten pissed for a reason, but the mental image is still an amusing one. It endears Hopper to her all the more, too. Granted, she may only be getting a part of the story, but she'd never have been able to get away with something like that. "I mean, it's kind of enough to drive any kid batshit, but even if she dragged the TV into the bedroom here, she'd be sharing it with a bunch of other kids."

Watching with only partially disguised amusement as he draws out the process of preparing to send the ball down the lane, she adds, "At least she'd have you if she showed up here."

"She was pissed because I'd gotten stuck at work," he says, although he knows that's a different story, it's just that he's not ready to tell Beverly any of the details about Eleven. He can't tell her about that fight, that the reason she'd been so mad at him in the first place is because she'd found out her mother was still alive. Maybe keeping that from her hadn't been the smartest decision he's ever made, but he'd done it to keep her safe and he's not sure he regrets it.

"It was Halloween," he says, drawing his arm back once, twice, and then finally letting it go the third time. The ball rolls down the lane, wavering for a long time at the edge of the gutter before it finally take out two of the pins on the end. "I told her I'd be home by 5:45 with candy, but I messed up. Got caught up at work with this weird case and by the time I got home..."

Well, she'd been pissed. And that night she had locked herself in her room, she just hadn't taken the TV with her that time.