something_incredible | (no subject)

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nikita

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It's Thursday evening, the weather is fine, and Hopper is just the right side of drunk. More often than not these days, he's been on the wrong side of drunk, and he's doing a good job of keeping it from Beverly, but he doesn't want to push his luck. She deserves a hell of a lot better than some useless drunk for a father figure and he wants to be better than that, too, but right now he's having a rough time.

It's shitty of him, but he blames Lucy. Blames her for disappearing, because it's a hell of a lot easier on him than shouldering the blame himself, which he knows is what he should do. But Hopper knows he should have done a lot of things in his life and one thing he's always been pretty good at is making a mess of things even when he knows he should be trying to get shit cleaned up instead.

Rather than figure out some way to just deal with all this, he's out again. Beverly's got some of her friends over and he's been checking on, but she's a good kid and he trusts her, even with boys at their place. Mostly because all her male friends seem to be into each other or little weirdos and he doesn't think they're going to be a problem. But because they've got music and the TV going and they're all loud because they're damn teenagers, he'd decided to slip out for a drink.

One drink had turned into a couple and now he's feeling good, sitting at the bar in just his type of place. The music is what everyone in this place calls 80s rock, which makes him feel old and out of touch, because for him it's all modern. But it's good and it isn't too loud, the booze is decent, and there's a couple of pool tables near the back where he thinks he might go play in another drink or two.

When a woman sits down next to him, he smiles at her, because she's pretty and he's not attached anymore and why the hell shouldn't he.

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This bar had the best retro rock, and it had eventually become one of Nikita's hangouts on the nights she wasn't at the restaurant, in a rig, in a ready room, at the gym, or collapsed on her bed. Which was about once every six weeks, at this point, so she wasn't a regular by any means, and she didn't recognize anyone here ever. Not even the bartenders were the same when she was only at a place every six weeks.

She slipped onto a stool next to a guy that looked kind of familiar, but not in a way that worried her yet. Maybe he had one of those faces. It wasn't unattractive, even though he'd clearly had a few already.

"Hi," she said easily, then asked the bartender for a vodka seven. She liked clear drinks.

Foreigner comes on the jukebox and they might not be Hopper's favourite band, but they've got a good sound to them and he leans back in his seat a little and says, "Okay. So would you call this music oldies? Because everyone else here seems to and there's only so much a guy from the eighties can take."

He's joking mostly, even though he does feel pretty damn old most of the time, because he's in a pretty good mood tonight. The sort of mood where he actually wants to talk to people without trying to drag information out of them. For the most part, he's shit at making friends, but these days, he probably ought to try a little harder.

Nikita chuckled at the guy's exasperation at the music. He was older than her in time and in age, apparently, which wasn't uncommon here (and also wasn't something she particularly cared about).

"I wouldn't call it oldies, but it might be a little ... vintage. But then, the best things are, right? Wine, clothes, music."

"Yeah, alright, I'll take that," he says with a laugh, then take another sip of his drink. His own wardrobe hasn't changed much from what he'd worn back in Hawkins, but it turns out flannel and t-shirts have never really gone out of style.

Or if they have, they've come back around again.

"Makes me feel a little less like I'm completely outta touch anyway," he says.

The bartender brought her drink and she slid a bill across to them with a smile. She never ran a tab and she tipped generously. The combination of those two meant she could leave quickly and no one worried too much about why or what she'd been doing with whom while she was there.

"Nah, outta touch would be the people who are here from different centuries, not different decades."

"Tell that to the teenagers," he says. "They think anyone over twenty-five is outta touch."

Shifting on his seat, he offers his hand to the woman, figuring if he's going to talk to her and not turn it into some sad attempt at picking her up, he might as well know her name. Not that he wouldn't introduce himself if he was going to turn it into a sad attempt at picking her up, but he'd probably be talking less about being out of touch if that were the case.

"Jim Hopper," he says.

"They always have, and they always will. We did, when we were their age," she shrugged. She certainly had, what with living on her own so soon and for so long.

"Nikita. Is this the part where I ask if you come here often?"

"Gotta be honest, I don't remember much about being a teenager except that it sucked," he says with a laugh. "And then I went to war."

With a grin and a shrug, he says, "I think one of us is supposed to say something like that, but only if we're trying to pick the other one up. Does that mean you're trying to pick me up?"

She's younger than he is, but not young enough that he thinks it might be weird. Either way, he's mostly just giving her a hard time, or at least, that's what he'll say if she tells him to back the hell off.

Being a teenager had been pretty awful for her, too, although at least she hadn't had to be in a war. On her own and then in prison was bad enough, but she wasn't going to compare that to a war zone, not even a little bit.

"Being a teenager sucks for everyone. War probably sucks more, though."

She gave him an overly obvious head to toe look and then smirked.

"I don't think I could pick you up. You look a little heavy and I'm just a delicate flower of a thing."

She clearly wasn't. She was slim, but she also had the arms of someone who lifted heavy things (like people) on a regular basis.

"Hey and I've lost weight since I got here," Hopper protests.

Maybe not a lot, since he still eats a lot of garbage and drinks too much, but some. It's easier to get fresh fruit and vegetables in Darrow, so he actually tries to cook every now and then.

"Besides, I dunno about delicate," he adds. "Cute, but you still look like you could put me on my ass if I tried the wrong thing."

She chuckled. He'd noticed that she wasn't just the blonde hair and blue eyes. If she wanted that to be noticed, she liked it. If she didn't, she was less happy, but if she didn't, she had ways of making it less likely. She wasn't doing any of those tonight.

"I think I'll take that as a compliment," she replied, and raised her drink in a little toast.

"It is," he answers with a lopsided grin. He hadn't really meant to hit on her and he's still not completely sure that's what he's doing, but she is cute and she does look like she could put him on his ass.

That's kind of his type exactly. Women who take no shit from men like him.

"Let me buy your next drink?" he asks.

There were some men who liked a woman who was stronger than them in some ways because they had issues with women or their mothers or whatever else. Nikita was not interested in talking to those men any more than she had to. But she didn't get that vibe from him, so she decided to stay put.

"Well, since you're complimenting me and all, I guess I could stay," she teased him just a little.

That's better than he deserves. He ought to tell her she shouldn't, that he's a black hole that just sucks everyone in until there's nothing left. How often has his life proved that to be the case?

But he's selfish, too, and he'll enjoy the company.

"So what is it you do here?" he asks. "In Darrow, not in the bar. Figure most everyone is in the bar for the same reason." Maybe not everyone. But for most people, it's a place to get a drink.

"I own a restaurant and work for the city as an EMT," she replied easily. That was public information, so there was no reason to not answer the question. Besides, she liked both of her jobs. She actually helped people, either by feeding them or by taking care of them medically. That was basically the opposite of anything she'd ever done in her life before now.

"You?"

"I'm a cop," he says, trying to figure out if he's ever seen her when responding to emergencies. He doesn't think so, but then, in a situation like that, no one is paying much attention to anything but the emergency itself.

"Looking for a promotion in the next while, hopefully," he adds. "I was chief back home and a detective in New York. It'd be nice to shed the uniform and maybe make a little more money, too."

Why did she keep running into cops? It was like she had a cop magnet, which she didn't particularly like. But it kept happening, so she'd keep hoping being an EMT was enough camouflage to avoid any awkward questions. People tended to not want to believe bad things about someone they knew, so she would keep being just a friendly EMT.

"I don't think we've ever worked together, but then, I'm not really thinking about the cops if I'm there," she replied after a moment of studying his face. He still looked sort of familiar, but she decided if she had worked with him, it hadn't been extensive. "More focused on the person with the extra holes."

Hopper gives a soft laugh and says, "Yeah, I was just thinkin' the same thing. Might've been at the same scene together, but usually when I'm there, my focus is on making sure I don't get in the way of the medical team."

His focus is on doing his job, really, on securing the scene and making sure no one tampers with any evidence, even by accident. That usually means not having anything to do with the EMTs.

"You like it, though?" he asks.

"It works pretty well that way. I pay attention to the people with things on the outside that should be on the inside and you pay attention to all the rest, including people who might want to get in the way," she agreed. Occasionally someone decided to take a swing at an EMT.

It usually went badly for them, especially if she was the EMT. She'd occasionally gotten people out of the way a little too well for an EMT who'd taken the basic self-defense class that was required, but so far no one had said anything to her about it.

"Yeah. You know how it goes - hours of boredom followed by minutes of mind-bending adrenaline rush - but I like it."

"Yeah," Hopper agrees. "Or hours of mind numbingly boring paperwork in my case. There's never enough time in a day to finish up all the paperwork expected outta cops."

And he gets it. Reports have to be made and filed. They need to keep records of everything that goes on, especially when there are plenty of bad cops out there who are willing to do terrible things. All of it needs to be there for evidence. But it's still boring as hell.

"I never thought I'd miss bein' a detective," he admits. "I moved back home from New York to get away from all that, but now that I'm here..." He shrugs. "Think I might like it again."

Nikita rolled her eyes at the mention of paperwork. She didn't have to do as much as a cop probably did, but she had to do enough. And she didn't enjoy it. That was one thing about Section - none of the agents ever did paperwork. There were whole levels of people who did, probably, and she wondered whether that was a totally different kind of hell than the one she'd been in.

"I don't know why they think filling out anything in triplicate is a good idea," she agreed, and nodded when he said he wanted to maybe be a detective.

"Probably being a detective here is a little different from New York. I mean, never been there, but this place is a lot smaller."

"Nothing's smaller than Hawkins, Indiana," he says, giving a rough laugh. "So it'd still be a step up from there in terms of excitement."

And Darrow has its share of crime. In his time here, Hopper has figured out just how many people there are here who take care of crime in ways that aren't exactly legal. If he's honest, he doesn't much care. He doesn't have much respect for men and women who go out of their way to hurt others, which he realizes is pretty rich coming from an alcoholic, but either way, he's not about the report superheroes or spies for doing what they do. There's still enough crime to leave him as a cop with a busy job.

"I was Chief there and I spent a lot of my days in my office drinking coffee," he admits.

"Main crimes being kids stealing street signs and occasionally doing wheelies in the grocery store parking lot with their grandmum's borrowed car?" she suggested, because that was the kind of small town his answer suggested. It sounded idyllic, but she knew that probably wasn't the reality. Nothing was as good as it seemed. Ever.

"Bit more exciting here, especially when the city decides to be itself."

"We didn't even get it that bad," he admits. "Most excitement I'd had before this place was a woman who got a bird caught in her hair. Mostly it was check stops on the highway to make sure no one was driving drunk and that was about it."

Hawkins had been a good place until that lab rolled in. Until they started messing around with things they shouldn't. Until Will went missing and Eleven was shoved out into their world.

He doesn't regret it, though. It brought him El.

She chuckled at the idea of a bird in the hair being the most excitement a cop had. It was different from Darrow, that was obvious. It was different from the life she'd led, too, not that she was going to mention that.

"I don't even want to know how you do that. Sometimes people try to explain how they ended up in my rig and it sounds a little like that story might have gone."