something_incredible | (no subject)

Entry tags:

nicaise

(no subject)

It's been a long few weeks and there's no end in sight, as far as Hopper can tell. Just like everyone has said, he's stuck here, stuck in this damn city where he doesn't recognize anyone or anything, and there's no way for him to get out. He's tried, just like he's sure nearly everyone else has tried, and he keeps ending up back in the same place where he started.

It's like some kind of purgatory, he's pretty sure of that, only he doesn't think he's dead.

Besides, his apartment building is haunted with a real ghost and he's pretty sure something like purgatory wouldn't have hauntings like that. But, hell, maybe he's wrong about that. Maybe he's wrong about all of it.

A part of him wants to stay holed up in his apartment and just never leave, but he knows what will happen if he does that. The beer will start and eventually that will lead back to the pills and while Hopper had never really seen a problem with what he'd been doing, he knows there are plenty of other people who would argue with him over that. He doesn't want to deal with it again, not here. Back in Hawkins he had mostly been left alone, but here it seems like people are always wanting check in and see how he's doing.

It would be annoying if he didn't find himself sort of enjoying it.

Darrow isn't as small as Hawkins, but it's small enough that he's run into some familiar faces now and then. When he spots Nicaise outside what looks like some sort of dance studio, Hopper is prepared to head over there with some comment about how it's good to see royalty again, but as he walks in that direction, he realizes what's happening. There are other boys with Nicaise, bigger kids, ones who are giving him a hard time about having come out of the studio apparently.

It reminds him a little of what Joyce said about Will, about the way Lonnie had been with him, and Hopper feels a red hot surge of anger.

"Hey!" he shouts, although he's close enough he doesn't need to raise his voice. When he yells, though, kids cower. It's not something he's proud of, but he knows it's the truth, and even bullies like this don't like hearing a voice like his. Probably because it sounds a lot like their shitty parents, he reflects, but Hopper isn't the nicest guy and he's going to use it if he can. "What the hell are you doing?"

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

For a moment, Nicaise froze at the shout. It didn't matter that he hadn't been doing anything wrong. He looked over, eyes wide, and saw that it was the policeman who'd bought him ice cream.

Ted and his friends also froze, they stopped their stupid taunts mid-sentence and Nicaise could tell their bodies had locked up just like his. Only they were the actual source of Hopper's ire, and their reactions showed it. Their little steps backwards. Nick stopped jabbing his shoulder. If they had a tail like Toulouse they would have been between their legs.

"Nothing," Ted said.

"Nothing," his friends echoed.

"We were just talking to our friend," Ted started to say.

Nicaise made a face and looked accusingly at Ted. "We aren't friends," he said, unwilling to play along. He was still clutching the strap of his duffel bag, knuckles white. His gaze went to Hopper, his eyes adult and solemn in a very young face. "And I'm none of the things they call me."

He just wanted him to know, in case he'd heard them.

Friends don't lie.

The echo of Eleven's words in the back of his mind feels like a slap to the face, but they ground him, too. Her stupid, infuriating little mantra had driven him crazy during the year they'd spent together, but she was right. These kids aren't Nicaise's friends, because any friends of his wouldn't be treating him like this. Not by the standards of Eleven and her little band of misfits and no matter what Hopper wants to think of them, they've proven over and over that they're loyal and kind and real friends.

"Bullshit," he says in a low voice. His hand goes to Nicaise's shoulder and gives a gentle squeeze, letting him know he's been heard, but his gaze is still on the other boys.

"You can't talk to me like that!" the leader starts. "You can't-"

"I can say whatever the hell I want to you, kid," Hopper says, cutting him off. "And right now, what I'm gonna say is that you better get the hell out of here before I drag you into the station and call your parents. Let them know I had to pick you up for assault. How well do you think that's gonna go over tonight at the dinner table?"

Nicaise's neck and face went hot at the hand on his shoulder, the touch causing a confusing swirl of nervousness and pleasure in his gut. He couldn't help the initial reaction, the association of what he'd used to expect by such attention. It passed. He wasn't used to anyone standing up for him like this beyond Laurent and Damen and it made him forget to speak.

"You wouldn't dare," Ted was saying, but he and the other two were already backing off.

Nicaise drank in the frightened looks on their faces they were trying so hard to hide. He never could have intimidated them like this. He'd embarrassed them a few times verbally, but it never stopped them. He'd been reluctant to tell Laurent, not wanting to appear weak, like he couldn't handle school of all things.

"Who the hell do you think you're talking to, kid?" Hopper asks, only this time when he says kid, it's not nearly as friendly as it is when he's talking to Beverly or Eleven. This time is sounds a hell of a lot more like a threat.

"You think a little stunt like this is funny?" he asks. "Makes you feel like you're something important? That's a shitty thing, picking on someone else to make yourself feel good. So you back off or we go to the station. Up to you."

The kid looks at Hopper with what he probably thinks is a look of anger, but there's fear in the trembling of his lips and Hopper almost feels bad. But then the kid mutters, "Whatever," and backs off, hurrying away.

Nicaise is a little envious of Hopper's abilities to completely verbally eviscerate Ted and his friends. He used to be desperate not to age, but now he wanted nothing else but to grow older, taller, stronger, to become someone who could intimidate like that.

Instead he was a lanky five foot three with a too-pretty face, the muscles he'd been gaining from ballet barely noticeable to anyone else.

He glanced up at Hopper, with his beard and his strong jaw. "Thanks," he said, forcing a smile through his embarrassment. He kept his voice blase, like he's untouchable from the way Ted and his friends treat him. "They're always like that."

"They're always little assholes?" Hopper asks, watching the other kids walk away. They're trouble, he can already tell. Maybe Hopper had never been the best kid in the world, he knows he'd lied to his mother more than a few times when he was in school, but he'd never been a bully. Mostly he'd been too wrapped up in his own dumb stuff and the huge crush he'd harboured on Joyce to think about being a dick to anyone else.

Maybe he really does have to go back to being a cop. There's not a lot he can do as he is, but he feels like going back to work of some kind means he's settling and he's not ready to do that.

"What's their problem?" he asks, looking at Nicaise again.

Nicaise briefly smiled when Hopper called them assholes. He watched them walk away and then looked up at Hopper with a shrug at his question.

"They're bigger than me," he said, as though it was obvious, but it wasn't much of a surprise to him. The bigger always picked on the smaller, the ones in power to the ones below them. Nicaise even hadn't been kind in court. Show too much weakness and you became the prey.

"They say I look like a girl," he added. "And that I'm gay."

They had been explicit in taunting him about the things he must have done with that last one, but Nicaise had heard worse.

It makes him think of Joyce, the way she'd whispered about Lonnie, that he'd made fun of Will for being queer, and Hopper had asked is he? Joyce had been pissed with him and he'd felt like a dick, but shit like that mattered when it came to missing people. Maybe not missing kids, not in the same way, but he'd been a cop in New York in the seventies. People did shitty things for even shittier reasons.

"Yeah, well, assholes like that learn how to be assholes from their parents," he says with a frown. "Even if I could take them into the station right now, it probably wouldn't have done much."

Whether or not Nicaise is actually doesn't matter in this case. They've decided he is, so in their mind he is and it's enough for them to be shitty to him.

"Don't worry about it," Nicaise said dismissively. He knew what they were doing wasn't breaking any laws, that Hopper could threaten them, maybe even bring them in, but it wouldn't mean they'd actually get locked up. What they said didn't hurt his feelings, but they made him feel cornered. He didn't like that they thought they were better than him. But there wasn't a lot he could do.

"Thanks for getting them off my back for now, though." He smiled up at Hopper.

If he's around often enough, Hopper thinks he can do something more than just scare them off for now, but he doesn't think Nicaise wants to hear something like that. Kids don't tend to love the idea of some adult hovering around and trying to protect them all the time, even if their intentions are sound.

"Yeah," he says. "No problem. They shouldn't get away with shit like that."

But they'll continue to. Until they're finally adults and they do get hauled in for some shitty behaviour, but Hopper knows even that probably won't help for long. He's seen enough repeat offenders and he knows the kids weren't doing anything illegal this time, but with attitudes like that, he knows it'll come.

"Do people where you're from often get away with things like that?" Nicaise asked curiously, wondering if Hopper was frustrated with the limits of this place, or of his own society as well. Nicaise knew he was a policeman back there, but it didn't automatically transfer over, like how Laurent had been King in Vere but his title wasn't recognized in Darrow.

Though at least Hopper could become a policeman here again, if he wanted to.

"If we were in my country they wouldn't be able to touch me," he added offhandedly.

"Yeah, there's bullies everywhere," he says with a frown, thinking of those kids Eleven had dealt with her in her own way. They had deserved worse than what she'd done, that's what he thinks, because although none of the kids would really talk, Hopper is sure they'd been trying to make Mike jump into the quarry.

That's a jump that might have killed him.

Then there are those little assholes who had goaded Steve into a fight after the graffiti they'd painted about Nancy.

Nicaise's comment makes him grin, though, and he nods and says, "Right. You're royalty."

Of course, in actuality it was because he was under the Regent's protection, but Nicaise preferred his lie. Anyone here could have been anything in their former worlds. They could have all been lying, and no one would know unless someone else who knew them before told. But who's to say they wouldn't be lying also?

He nodded to Hopper.

"It doesn't seem fair I should endure this abuse when it could be solved by a swift execution."

Hopper huffs out a surprised laugh, then reaches in his pockets for his cigarettes. "Hell, kid, I might not be big on bullies, but I don't think I'll be pushing for executing kids any time soon either."

He nods up at the studio and says, "You can dance, right?" He figures that's why Nicaise is there in the first place, he's carrying a gym bag, and while that sure as hell wouldn't be something Hopper would be interested in, while he's sure it's part of why those kids give Nicaise a hard time, he knows it's not the worst thing for him to be interested in.

"Maybe you ought to learn how to fight, too," he says. "Dancing makes you strong, right?"

A touch of amusement flickered over Nicaise's face when Hopper laughed, though he was very good at maintaining a stoic, bored expression generally. People couldn't exploit your weaknesses when they couldn't read you, when you appeared to be uninterested in anything they said. It was a good survival tactic. He'd learned it from the best.

"I take ballet," Nicaise affirmed, thinking of the musculature that had already been forming. Nothing like Damen, of course, but it was something. "Actually...my guardian's lover has been teaching me self-defense. I just keep thinking, there are three of them and only one of me. Those aren't great odds."

The way Nicaise talks sounds like something out of some kind of fairy tale book, but Hopper ignores all the guardian and lover talk for the time being and just shakes his head.

"You don't need to beat all three of 'em, kid. The only one you need to take on is the leader and even him you don't really need to fight," he says with a shake of his head. "You let him think he's the big man or whatever the hell he wants to think and then one day, once you're sure you know how to do it properly, you sucker punch him hard enough to knock him on his ass. That's all you need to do."

One time, that kid goes down one time, and Hopper is sure he'll leave Nicaise alone. Maybe he'd bolted today because of Hopper's presence, but in the long run that'll only make it worse. He's seen it countless times before.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only