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Apparently in 2018, it's impossible to find anywhere that allows you to smoke inside. He could quit, like half the people he meets these days suggests he do, but Hopper doesn't really like the idea of giving up the one thing that's still familiar to him in this weird city.

He's not even a cop anymore. He could be. At least, he's pretty sure he could be, but this place seems to fall somewhere between New York and Hawkins when it comes to the level of crime he'd be facing and Hopper honestly isn't sure if he's ready to take a step back in New York's direction. Hawkins had been weird in recent years, yeah, but somehow facing down a bunch of monsters with heads full of teeth where their faces should be just doesn't seem as daunting as returning to cases of assault and murder and rape and abuse.

Shit like that's exhausting. New York had just about wrung every last little bit of good out of him and he can think of a lot better things to do with his time than going back to being a cop.

Like smoking. And drinking. And maybe taking a few pills to ease the pain. He hasn't, not yet, but he thinks about it every day. The only thing that keeps him from going back there right now is the thought that Eleven might show up here someday and he'd hate for her to see him like that, his eyes glazed over, just this side of high on whatever pain pills he was able to find. It had been fucked up before, but at least before there hadn't been a kid to worry about. The fact that there hadn't been was what took him to the pills in the first place, but now there is again. There's Eleven.

Maybe some other kids, too.

So right now he's huddled outside a bar, the collar of his Hawkins PD coat turned up against the cold wind, smoking the last cigarette in the pack he'd bought the day before. He's going through them too fast, but there's not much else here to distract him.

Another beer maybe. It's probably too early to get drunk, but just one more won't kill him. He takes one last drag from his cigarette before crushing it against the heel of his boot, then turns back toward the bar and nearly walks straight into someone.

"Shit, sorry," he says, lifting his hand to her shoulder to steady her.

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"Author, maybe," Lucy says because she'd loved writing her one book even if it hadn't been widely read. She could see herself doing that as a full time job, loading herself down with research, taking notes, and editing something until her fingers were raw and the words started blurring.

"I love to read and sometimes things I would read would either strike me as wrong or not detailed and I'd want to change that. I've written one book but if I could really do it full time and make it work, I would. It's just a pipe dream. With everything else going on, teaching leaves me time to spend with my family, were I home, and to figure this place out. That is almost a full time job right there. There's a lot to take in when it comes to Darrow."

"You had that answer ready so fast I think that's probably what you should be doing," Hopper says honestly, giving a rough laugh. She had asked the same of him and he hadn't had the slightest idea how to respond, but she hadn't even hesitated and he thinks that probably says something.

"This place gives you money, right?" he asks. The way he's worked out the budget, the amount this place gives him is enough to cover his rent and bills and enough food. What he needs a job for is to drink too often and too much, but if Lucy's not worried about that, he thinks she'd be okay in the stipend from the city.

Quit teaching and spend your days trying to work this place out and writing a book," he says with a smile. "Why not, right?"

"It does but there's one large problem with that idea in that I don't have any ideas right now of what I should write," Lucy says with a chuckle. "The last time I wrote a book, I had an idea so while the idea is a good one, I think I'll have to keep teaching until I at least know what I want to write."

What did one write in a city that would be her only audience? Lincoln was her passion but it had already been done and she doesn't think many would want to read something like that here. She thinks she'd have to make it specific to this place and she doesn't know enough about this place to do that.

"I have some issues with just sitting at home and doing nothing," she admits. "Too much time to think."

"What was your last book about?" Hopper asks. Maybe he's never been much of a reader and had always done his best to avoid doing his homework in high school, but he thinks if someone he knows has written a book, he might go out of his way to read that. Whether or not it's actually available in a place like this is another question entirely, but he figures he'll worry about that later.

Once he works out if he'll actually be able to sit down and read it or not. Because if she's written about astrophysics, he's probably pretty screwed in that regard.

Then again, he has the spare time now, like he's just said. He's not working, doesn't know if he's going to be able to go back in the way people expect, and that does leave him with a lot of time to just think. Thinking, in his case, tends to lead to drinking and he knows drinking leads to pills. That's not what he wants here.

"Oh, Abraham Lincoln," Lucy tells without shame. She knows that he's been written extensively about and some of the things she'd written about had probably been a retread but she hopes that some things had been different and that her words had made a mark on maybe one or two people.

"He's sort of a hero of mine," she admits with a shy shrug. She tucks some hair behind her ears and continues, "I know I'm not the only one either. But, I was inspired and motivated enough to write a book about him. I don't have it here and I doubt it's in the library but."

But, she'd written a book. She was proud of it. She doesn't know if she'll ever write another one but at least she'd done it once. It's one of those things that a lot of people want to do and she'd done it.

"So I guess you've already answered my next question, which was going to be whether or not I'd be able to read it," Hopper says. Abraham Lincoln might not be his primary interest, but he's not uninterested in the topic either and he does have a lot of free time to kill. Time spent reading is probably better than time spent drinking.

And if he's Lucy's hero, the book is probably interesting. She probably cares a lot about the content that's in it.

"So I'll just have to ask you directly instead," he decides. "Why's he your hero?"

"I think the reasons probably change on a daily basis," Lucy tells him, looking thoughtful. "But, in the simplest terms, I think he was ahead of his time on many things and was a visionary the likes that hasn't existed in a long, long time."

There were other influential, important figures in history, Lucy knows, but none had struck her as deeply as Lincoln had.

"I think he wanted things to be better for everyone though I know that it's impossible to make everyone happy," Lucy continues, chewing her lower lip. "And I think he wore his hat very well. Much better than most men I know."

"Huh," Hopper says, having never really given it much thought. All he really knows is he doesn't care much for Reagan, but he probably wouldn't care much for any of the men who had run for president, figuring them all to be some kind of crook.

"I don't know how many politicians actually want things to be better for people," he says. "But I don't know a hell of a lot about Lincoln either, maybe things were different for him than they are for Reagan now. Or whoever the hell is president in 2018."

He still has a really hard time accepting that difference in years, but it's not like he can argue with thousands of people in this city who insist he's time traveled.

"The politicians these days are better ignored and tolerated than anything else," Lucy agrees with a twist of her lips. Since traveling with the Lifeboat team, she's lost track of who's in charge of what, sometimes forgetting that she is back in present time and thinking someone like Truman or Kennedy or Washington was in charge.

"Lincoln's about the only one I feel like that about anyway," she tells him, shrugging. "There's a lot of interesting figures in history but none of them that I...admire in the way that I admire Lincoln."

His brother wasn't bad either. She wonders if that, as he went through time, Robert remembered her. "Anyway, talking about politics is generally frowned upon because it's so divisive. That and religion, as far as I know."

"Well, if it helps be less divisive, my thoughts on both can be summed up by..." And then he shrugs deeply. He knows he ought to care more, especially when it comes to politics, especially given that he used to be the chief of police in Hawkins, but he really doesn't. Since Sara's death, he's been too tired to care about much of anything and Eleven had taken him by surprise and taken up the rest of his energy.

Keeping her safe had been his priority and unless Lucy thinks labs should have the right to keep children in locked rooms where they can experiment on them, he doubts their politics will come in conflict all that much. And he might not know her well, but she doesn't seem the sort.

"Don't tell anyone from back home their police chief didn't give a shit about politics, though," he says with a small smile. "They might not like that."

"Oh, your secret's safe with me," she assures him, putting a finger to her lips and miming zipping them up. It's actually a little nice to hear that someone just doesn't care about politics, that they're not going to try and argue that one way is better than the other and that they're more concerned with themselves, their family than trying to get the government to change because Lucy knows from experience governments are not very yielding.

"Truth be told, I don't really care that much about politics either," Lucy admits. "I like the history behind governments and why they do the things they do but I don't want to be involved so we're agreed on that. See, look at that, we can connect about something that's not dark and sad. We're good adults."

It makes him smile, the way she mimes zipping her lips and he thinks if he were going to spend his day doing something other than drinking, this is a hell of an improvement. She's pretty, she's a hell of a lot smarter than he is, their conversation hasn't been difficult, despite the fact that she's smarter than he is. It's been a long time since Hopper has met anyone new, but these days it seems to be all he's doing.

It's not the worst thing in the world. Especially not here.

"Is that what makes us good adults?" he asks, his smile growing a little. "I've never been sure I was ever that good at it." He was at his best with Sara, though, of that there's no doubt.

"I think if you're upright and not laying in a gutter somewhere then you're a good adult," Lucy decides. "Not that I'm an expert on such things and I haven't been in a gutter lately. But, life's hard. Standing up and getting through it means you're a good adult in my eyes."

It would have been so easy to lay down and just stay there and Lucy's done that at certain points in her life. She's been down and she hasn't wanted to get up. It's family that's gotten her up, gotten her going again and while the accomplishment is small, it had felt monumental to her at the time.

"If I had a gold star sticker, I'd give it to you," Lucy says, smiling. "I don't because college students don't typically want stickers but the sentiment is there."

Hopper has done a lot of lying down. Maybe not in literal gutters, but he's pretty sure passing out on the front porch of his cottage could count as a metaphorical gutter, especially given the amount of beer and the number of pills that had been in his system at the time. These days, alone in this damn city, he can practically feel himself twitching for both, but he thinks if he does that, he might end up in a real gutter this time.

Maybe Eleven isn't here, but there are other kids who might need him. Kids who might not trust him completely anymore if something like that happens. He needs to make sure he does right in this regard, even if it's hard.

"I think your assessment is pretty rare," he says with another small smile. "I'm from a small town and there are plenty of people there who think being upright isn't nearly enough. But then, small towns talk, don't they?"

"Well, maybe I'm not an expert after all," Lucy says, shrugging her shoulders, "but it's what I think. If you're gonna stand on your own two feet and get through life, you're adult enough for me."

Not that she was the be all end all of the subject but she'd seen enough people struggle and fall down and get back up that she counts that as an accomplishment. Anything after that, in her opinion, is just a victory. Getting a job, getting married, whatever, anything extra is just incentive for the person.

"Besides, you're not in your previous small town." Lucy points out. "You're in some mid sized city that no one can get into and no one knows the true location of. Things are different here and unless someone's told you otherwise, you're an adult. I say so."

"Well, as long as I've got someone's approval," he says with a laugh. "And I think you being a professor lends it a little more weight than it would if you were just the person serving me drinks at a bar." Being a bartender is fine, he figures, it's a job, but there's something about the idea of being a professor that just seems a little other to someone like Hopper. She's smarter than the average person in Hawkins, that's for are, especially a person like him, someone who just barely got out in the first place and then only managed to do it on the back of a war.

When the good stuff had ended, he'd gone shuffling right back to where he'd come from.

"So if anyone challenges me on that, I can point 'em toward you?" he asks, still smiling. "You'll take them on for me?"

"I will do my best to take them on, yes," Lucy promises, nodding. "I don't know how well I'd do in a physical altercation but I've never been afraid to run my mouth and I wouldn't be afraid to voice my opinion in this instance either. Hopefully we never run into that though."

She wants to think that Darrow's a little better. That because it's so diverse people will be more open minded and accepting of what other people think. Even in something as silly and simple as this, she hopes people won't argue.

"But today, in this coffee shop, I dub you a true adult," Lucy tells him, nodding. "Decreed, accepted and done."

"That makes it sound very official," he says. "I guess I'm lucky we met today or I might still be wandering around, only possibly an adult."

There are days when he feels impossibly old, days when he feels like he's seen so much more than the average person and he knows that can't actually be true, not when so many bad things happen to so many people. And then there are days, too, when he still feels as if he's trying to work everything out. Like he never quite got past that kid who went off to war.

"And I can take care of a physical altercation on your behalf," he says. "Being a soldier and a cop was good for that."

"I'd appreciate that. I've gotten better at the physical side of defending myself but there's a lot of people that are bigger than me and, well..."

He was a big man. Couple that with being a police officer and a soldier meant that he was probably trained much more thoroughly than her on the job training while traveling through time. She'd learned how to hide well, how to hold a gun and how to do some basic hand to hand combat (thanks, Wyatt) but nothing that would protect her all that long from someone who meant to hurt her.

"If someone should take affront to my definition, you'll be the first call I make while I try to convince the person to not take any action until you get there."

"Well, for that you'd have to have my phone number," Hopper says and he realizes it sounds like sort of a come on in the same moment he decides it is. Since moving back to Hawkins from New York, he's gone on a few dates, though most of them have ended up being nothing more than a single date, a single night spent together in some cases, and he knows that's partly due to the fact that he'd still been hung up on Diane.

Ever since Eleven barrelled into his life, he hadn't thought much about his ex-wife. She had moved on, remarried, had another child and for so long he had been so angry with her, resented that she was able to just forget Sara in a way he never could, but he's not angry anymore. He's not caught up in thinking about her anymore. And Lucy is pretty, she's smart, she understands what he's been through in a way few other people do. Maybe it's crazy, but he doesn't think so.

"Which I can give you," he adds a second later. "And you can use if maybe you think you'd like to have dinner with me sometime?"

It takes Lucy a second to realize what she's been asked, a testament to just how often she goes out on dates. The fiancee she apparently has back home doesn't count because she has no memory of him whatsoever. She can only hope they went on dates before they got engaged but again, there's nothing in her memories to say whether that's true or not.

"I -- yes, I'd be glad to," Lucy finally says when she finds her voice. There's a slight flush on her cheeks and she hides that by looking down and tucking her hair back behind her ears.

"Take your number and have dinner with you sometime," Lucy adds just in case it's not clear what she's agreeing to. "I'd be glad to do both of those."

It seems like a no brainer of an answer, really. He's handsome in a rough around the edges way and he's been kind, interesting and she's been able to talk to him about some rather dark things without it feeling weird or strained or too much.

Looking back at the moment, he's not sure if he expected Lucy to agree to dinner. They've just met, after all, and while that's never stopped Hopper, he knows not everyone thinks the same way that he does. What he thinks he has working for him is the fact that he's a dad -- somehow that makes him less intimidating -- and their similar situations with people they love. Besides Steve, who knows about Sara because everyone in Hawkins knew about Sara, Lucy is the only person in Darrow who even knows his daughter's name.

He's told a few people about Jane, but Sara is something else entirely. Something guarded close to his heart, a part of him that's never really visible beyond the blue braided hairband he still wears around his wrist.

"Okay," he says, then grins. "Great. Except... you'll probably have to add your number into my phone for me. I'm still figuring this thing out."

Lucy can't stop herself from laughing. Traveling through time has made her aware that the technology she's so used to should not be taken for granted. Anything from electricity to sewage to running water were things she's had to deal with. Lucy doesn't think herself a vain person but being in places where she can't shower or has to use the bathroom in the most natural of ways is hard.

So, while she laughs, it's not at him. It's at the way he's stated such a simple fact and that even though she's not traveling through time, different time periods seem to be traveling right at her.

"Happy to," Lucy says, nodding. "Don't worry too much about not understanding cell phones. I've had one for years and I still forget what all it can do. It takes some getting used to. But, it's handy to have."

People around here seem to protect their phones fiercely with passwords and fingerprints and a defensiveness he just doesn't understand, so he just slides his unlocked phone across the table to Lucy.

"I keep hearing about all the things they can do now. Games and photos and something called apps. Right now I'm mostly just impressed I'm not stuck to a cord in the wall when I need to call someone."

Not that he has many people to call. Back home there might have been one or two more, but mostly he'd only ever gotten in touch with people for work. And in Darrow there's really just Steve or Beverly.

"That's what I tend to use it for the most. Calling and text messaging," she says, eyes down on his phone. She navigates it easily, finding his contacts and putting her name and phone number in there under the letter P.

"And to keep track of my schedule," she adds once she hands it back to Hopper. "It's got a pretty loud alarm that wakes me up and makes sure I don't miss a class. You really don't want to hear the crap that you get if you're a teacher who oversleeps for one of her classes."

It didn't happen often but it had happened. And it had taken a few weeks to hear the end of it. She tucks her hands into her pockets and smiles as she jokes, "I will try not to oversleep for our dinner. But, if I do, use this phone. Wake me up."

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