something_incredible | (no subject)

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steve

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At least once a week, Hopper makes an effort to check up on Steve. Sometimes it's just a text, mostly to make sure he's still around and still alive, but he tries to head over to his apartment every so often, too. Because a text is one thing and he's glad he'd figured out how to use his phone to make that happen, but it's easy to lie through a text.

Hopper's seen Steve Harrington black and blue more than a few times. If he wants to make sure that shit isn't happening here, he has to go see it for himself.

And it's not like it's a real hardship. Steve's the only other person here from Hawkins, the only other person here who really knows about the shit that went down back there. He's the only person who really knows what Eleven can do. Whatever it else that means, there's a connection there and Hopper owes it to the both of them -- plus Steve's parents -- to make sure he gets through this whole weird city without much trouble.

So he heads over. It's a week night, he figures that's the best way to do it, because Steve's less likely to have some social thing to go to. Hopper doesn't have much of those himself, he either hangs out with Beverly or somehow convinces Lucy to go on another date with him or drinks alone in the apartment he's been given. Nothing quite so sad tonight, not when he shows up at Steve's building and presses the buzzer for his apartment.

"C'mon, kid," he mutters. "Don't tell me you're this popular."

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Steve is not, in fact, that popular. Yeah, he's got friends, and he's got work, but tonight he's at home when the buzzer sounds. He was about to start thinking about pulling something together for dinner, which pretty much just meant flipping through the app on his phone until he decided what kind of takeout he wanted.

But then there's someone at the door.

"Yeah?" he says, leaning against the door. "Who's calling?"

"Who's calling?" Hopper asks. "What're you, some fancy high society lady now?"

He can't just say he's here to check on him and make sure he's doing okay. It's easier to give Steve a hard time than be up front about the fact that Hopper actually worries about him and wants to make sure he's getting along in this place. Saying shit like that was hard enough when it was Eleven and he can barely force the words out of his mouth with Beverly.

Still, he figures they know. He's here, after all. Maybe it's not so impressive for some, but he's here.

Steve sighs audibly over the intercom and then he hits the door release and turns away, opening the front door and leaving it ajar before he pads back to the kitchen in his sock feet. He kind of likes that Hopper checks in on him regularly; it makes him feel like everything's going to be okay, even this far from home.

The sigh makes him laugh and Hopper heads into the building and then straight for Steve's apartment. That's what he's used to, some kid being a smart ass at him and it's not quite the same, but hearing something like that makes him miss Eleven a little bit less. It doesn't undo everything, but it helps.

"Hey," he says as he pushes open the door and steps into the apartment. He can't see Steve from here, but he figures he's close. "Should I present myself or are we good with the standard greeting?"

"Whatever," calls Steve, but it's good natured. "I'm in the kitchen, pulling dinner together. This a flying visit or do you want to sit down and have a beer while you wait?"

There's a pattern to these visits by now.

"I can sit down for a bit," Hopper says as he comes into the kitchen and does just that, taking a seat at the table as he looks over toward Steve. He doesn't really have any plans for himself later, he doubts falling asleep watching a movie on TV counts as being a plan, so he's okay to stick around for a little while.

"Figure if Beverly wants to ditch the Children's Home, she'll give me a call," he adds with a shrug. Otherwise, for the moment, he's free. "Kinda surprised you're not busy, though."

"What? You think I've got some kind of glittering social calendar going on? I'm a mechanic, Hopper." He grins, going back to what he's dealing with on the stove. "I was at a party the other night for a friend of mine. Only just managed to get all of the glitter out of my hair."

"Mechanics are the same as cops, then," he says, not quite a question, still mostly giving Steve a hard time. "Not allowed to have social lives."

It's different. They both know it is. Hopper hadn't had much of a social life while he was a cop first because he'd had a family to go home to at the end of the day, and then because he hadn't. And Steve's young, a hell of a lot younger than Hopper, he figures there has to be something interesting for him to do most nights.

"How was the party? Besides covering you with glitter?"

"Can't afford a damn social life," grumbles Steve, good-natured. He's doing okay for himself, honestly.

"Yeah, not bad," says Steve, nodding. "Talked a little. Drank a little. Hung out a little with Lois."

"She use one of her fake IDs to get in?" Hopper asks, although he's mostly joking. He'd asked around enough about the boy who'd been giving her a hard time and he might not be working as a cop in Darrow, but he's still got the Hawkins jacket and the right kind of vibe, and he'd ended up getting a fair bit of information on the guy.

He's pretty sure that's what Lois had been doing, too. Looking for the fake identification not to buy them, but to get something else done. He's just not sure what she'd been doing. Not yet.

"She's a nice girl, huh?" he asks, studying Steve.

"They had wristbands," says Steve, rolling his eyes a little. He smiles though, at the thought of her. "Yeah," he says. "She is. She's pretty much my best friend around here, anyway."

Hopper shrugs at that and says, "It's been a long time since I've had to worry about how to get into a club without being legal." And he's pretty sure none of the bars in Hawkins really cared about whether or not anyone was sneaking in before they were twenty-one. Not when he was a teenager anyway.

"Best friend," he says, nodding. "Nothing more than that?"

Steve hesitates for a moment, focusing on cooking, and then he nods.

"Just best friends," he says. "Shit, I mean. I'd like it to be more, but she's made it pretty clear, and I'm not about to press the issue. I'm not going to be that asshole twice."

"Huh," Hopper says and then nothing more for a little while. It's not really his business, Steve's not his kid and neither is Lois, but he has to wonder why that is. Steve's a good kid and as far as Hopper can tell, he's good looking, too. Girls in Hawkins had always seemed to like him well enough.

Maybe there's someone else. Maybe Lois is just busy. Or maybe he shouldn't be getting involved with a teenager's love life.

"I've gone on a few dates," he offers instead. "This woman named Lucy."

"Yeah?" says Steve, honestly relieved to have something to talk about that's not his love ife, or lack of it. He starts to plate up pasta for both of them.

"What's she like?"

"Smart," he says. "Too damn smart for me. She teaches at the college and she wrote a book back home."

And she's hiding things. Hopper is too good a cop -- even if it hadn't always seemed that way in Hawkins -- for him not to notice these things. Whatever it is, he doesn't think it's a big deal, he doesn't think she's hiding some murderous past, so he's willing to just let it all come out with time. It's not as if he doesn't have his own secrets.

"And very understanding," he adds. "And pretty."

"Sounds like you're punching above your weight," says Steve, grinning, like he hadn't had a crush on Joyce Byers back in the day, along with everyone else, like he didn't see how things were between her and Hop, sometimes. He sets a plate of food down in front of Hop, his own on the other side of the table. "You want a beer with that?"

"Way above," he says, but then he tends to think that about most of the women who date him. Not the ones he takes home for just one night and he knows that's shitty of him, but it is what it is.

Diane was better than he could ever hope to be. He and Joyce had never dated outside of high school, but she's the same. And Lucy is so far above him he can't really understand what she sees in him.

"And yeah, if you've got."

"Yeah, I've got," says Steve, grabbing a beer for both of them before he sits down at the end of the table. "Lois is way too good for me. But there's this guy back home that she's hung up on and she's never, ever going to see my that way."

That's sort of how he'd seen Joyce for a long time. Too good for him, hung up on some guy who treated her like shit, never going to see him that way. He doubts that would ever change. They're friends, good ones, but Joyce deserves someone safe, someone like Bob, and he knows how that went, but that doesn't mean she doesn't still deserve someone like that.

Hopper is decidedly not like that.

"Things change," he says. "The guy from home isn't here, right? She can't pine after him forever."

"Yeah, he's not here." Steve shrugs. "I don't know, man. She was really weird about touch - like, she didn't even like to let me hug her and then the other day, she like...had me rub her shoulders?" He takes a swallow of his beer. "I try really hard not to think about it."

"She knows you like her?" he asks, just to be sure. Steve had made it sound like she does and if she knows, Hopper does think that's all kind of weird. But maybe he just doesn't know how kids are these days. Back when he was in high school, the only reason a girl would have asked him to rub her shoulders is if she wanted him to be touching her.

But things are different now. At least, he thinks they must be. He's not really an expert on teen behaviour.

"Yeah, she knows," says Steve, taking a bite of his food and chewing, one shoulder coming up in a shrug. "I guess it kind of is what it is at this point right?"

"Yeah, I guess so," Hopper agrees, but he has to wonder. Asking Steven for a back rub seems like the sort of thing that suggests she does kind of like him, but the only way to know for sure is to ask her. Somehow he's got a feeling Steve wouldn't care much for his meddling.

"When I was a teenager I never figured I'd be glad to be old, but now I'm glad not to be a teenager," he says with a laugh, then takes a sip of his beer.

"Yeah," says Steve, with a little nod. "Sometimes, it kind of...really fucking sucks." He shakes his head. "It's okay, though, Like, I'm not going to waste away because she's not into me or anything."

"Yeah, I figure you'll get over it," Hopper agrees, even though he'd never really gotten over Joyce. But he'd left, gone to fight in Vietnam, and when he'd come back there had been Lonnie. It's not like he'd ever asked anything of her, so it was his own fault at the end of it.

"Hell, at least you're not stuck at the Children's Home," he adds a second later. "That must be nice."

"Yeah, I'm sure I will. Plenty more fish, right?" says Steve. His nose wrinkles at the mention of the children's home. "Thank god for being over eighteen, right? That place would have sucked. I'm not even finishing school, man. Don't need someone to tell me when to go to bed."

"You're not finishing school?" Hopper asks. He's not about to start telling Steve when to go to bed, but he does think he ought to finish high school. This place pays them to just hang out if that's what they want to do, so Steve doesn't need to work just to keep himself afloat.

Not unless he's developed some expensive habits.

"I don't think so," says Steve, shrugging. "It was nearly over at home, anyway, and I had no idea what I was going to do after it. I've got a job. I'm training as a mechanic. What do I need a diploma for? My dad's not here to make me work for him. No-one's pressuring me to go to college. I guess...Yeah. I don't see the point."

"I know I'm not your parents, but I gotta say, kid, I think that's a stupid decision," Hopper said honestly. Maybe he doesn't want to go to college now and Hopper sure as hell isn't going to tell him he should, but he might find he wants to later. Or he might want to upgrade whatever he's learning as a mechanic and Hopper knows in this more modern time they've found themselves living in, a lot of those things require a high school diploma.

"Just sayin', if you find you want to do something that needs it five years from now, it's gonna be harder to go back than if you just finish it now."

"Yeah, well, maybe," admits Steve, shoving one hand back through his hair. "But I've looked into it and it looks like I could study for my GED and just take it here, without having to actually go to classes? So I was thinking about doing that this summer, so at least I've got it, you know? It's more the thought of sitting in classes that I can't stand."

"It's something," Hopper agrees. He doesn't see any problem with the GED, just as long as Steve has something. There's no good reason not to do it. Even if he did have to go to class, Hopper's of the mind it'd be a lot better for him in the long run.

"I just think you might regret it," he says. "If you don't do it at all."

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