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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"Well, see, you're ready for the job and you don't even have it. You know what not to try to investigate in a city that's weird as this one," she teased him a little.

Everyone knew what not to really notice, if they didn't have to. And sometimes if they did. It was a weird thing, but it made sense too.

He laughs and says, "Y'know, in terms of weird, this place isn't much worse than the city I came from."

Hawkins hadn't always been weird. For a long time it had been as normal as any small town could get, he figures, but that had changed in recent years. Now it had monsters and underground upside-down mirror image worlds with creeping vines and dark shadows. It had cracks between worlds and creatures that looked like someone had combined a dog and a flower with teeth. Girls with super powers, a lab that fed people LSD and kidnapped their psychic children. And now it apparently had Russians.

Hawkins had turned into a goddamn weird place.

"If where you were from was this weird, I don't think I'll be visiting any time soon," she noted. She paused for a second, then added, "even if the company would be good."

She'd decided yeah, she'd flirt with Jim the Cop. Maybe it wouldn't go anywhere, but it didn't have to. Sometimes it was just a little fun to flirt.

He grins at that and shrugs, vaguely pleased with the comment, all the while figuring the company wouldn't be that good. Right now, he's just glad he's not that drunk, because that's when he gets really down on himself and he figures that whole black hole sort of talk really isn't exactly what most women want to hear about when first meeting someone.

"I dunno, I get the feeling you'd be okay there," he says. "It's weird, but if I made it out alive, it can't be that hard to do."

"There's a life motto," she joked. "If I did it, it can't be that hard."

It wasn't exactly going to be the kind of thing people embroidered on tea towels, assuming anyone ever actually did that, which she sort of doubted.

"Right up there with, 'Hey, watch this!', yeah?"

"Yeah and 'it's worked for me so far'," he answers, grinning at her. "Which I'm gonna use right now and say it's worked for me so far. I feel like we could make a whole line of merchandise with these real inspirational sayings on 'em."

He smiles at Nikita again. "You lookin' for a new business partner?" He's joking, he wouldn't be able to give up his job as a cop. Not for anything. He couldn't even give it up for Diane when she asked him to.

"Oh, there's loads of options. Much better than those posters of kittens hanging off a wire," she shrugged. She hated those things. There had been tons of them in every shelter she'd ever been to, as if a kitten on a wire was going to change the reality of living rough.

"There's a flirty line in there about partners, but I'm not sure I'm willing to be that cliched."

"Nah?" he asks, his grin widening. "What if you told me the flirty line came on a poster with a kitten hanging off a wire? Would that it make it more of a cliche or less?"

Hopper doesn't mind a cliche or two. Especially if they come with a bit of flirtation. He might not be looking for a new relationship, still too messed up over the loss of the last one, but there's nothing wrong with flirting with a pretty lady.

She pretended to think about that. This was a ridiculous conversation, but it was fun. She needed that sometimes. And Jim wasn't bad looking or bad acting, or at least not yet. He hadn't tried to grab anything he shouldn't, anyway.

"I'd actually like to see one of those posters with a line on it. I might pay more attention to it."

"Yeah? Well, now I'm gonna have to misuse police property and be a time thief and make you one," he answers, knowing that's never going to happen even as the words are out of his mouth. He doesn't have the slightest idea how to even begin doing something like that, for starters. All his coworkers are a hell of a lot better at computers than he is and while he's learned enough to get his paperwork done, the man who used to fill out paperwork on a typewriter isn't going to be designing posters any time soon.

"Also probably pay off someone else to do it," he adds. "Because I don't know shit about computers."

"I don't either," she said confidingly, and it was even partially the truth. What she knew about computers was what she had to know to file business stuff and what she had to know to file paperwork for work.

"I pay one of my waitresses extra to handle that stuff. She likes the extra money, I like not having to do it. Works out."

"Hell, I wish I could pay one of my coworkers to do that for me, but I think they might not like having to take on extra paperwork," he says with a laugh. It feels kind of good, laughing this much. It's easy and Nikita doesn't any expectations of him beyond not being a jerk, he figures.

"You want another drink?" he asks. It's the easiest way to figure out if he's going to get that pitying sort of look if he orders another for himself.

She didn't usually have more than two drinks in public, just because she didn't like the loss of control it might bring. Not that Section hadn't trained her to handle herself under the influence of things, but she didn't like it for herself. Loss of control was dangerous, sometimes literally.

But she liked talking to Jim, and she didn't have to actually drink the whole thing, so why not? She wasn't sure how many he'd had already, but that was his own business, mostly. As long as he wasn't planning to drive, the hangover was his problem.

"Yeah, why not? I don't have to be in tomorrow until later. Hopefully you don't either."

"Got tomorrow off," he answers as he hails the bartender to bring them another round. "Got a kid at home, though, so this'll probably have to be the last one, but she won't mind if I'm out a bit late. I'll tell her I was talkin' to a pretty lady and she'll probably die of relief that I'm not yet becoming a sad old hermit."

He's joking, sort of, because he knows Beverly has worried about him ever since Lucy disappeared. It's worse that he can't do much to make her feel better about it, because the loss had hurt. It had hurt a lot and he hasn't exactly been dealing with it very well. All that's the kind of stuff he knows better than to say to Nikita, though, because you don't tell the pretty woman you're chatting up about the last pretty woman you lost.

There was something really appealing about Jim. It was a little bit of a physical thing because he wasn't bad looking, especially when he smiled or talked about his kid, but it was also a mental thing. It was someone who'd been through crazy stuff and had maybe not the best coping mechanisms, but still was a real person with a soul. Walter had been the same way.

"Definitely not a sad old hermit. I'll even write a note attesting that we had a real conversation and take a picture with you, if that'll help."

"Yeah, she might think I'm making it up otherwise," he agrees. "Giving her some kinda story just to get her off my back."

It's actually Steve who gives him a much harder time about finding someone to spend a night or two with. Beverly doesn't seem to really think it's that necessary, even if she worries about him, but Steve is practically begging to be able to hook Hopper up with someone. He's declined so far, thinking it's a little too sad to be set up by a teenager, but this is nice. Meeting someone on his own. It doesn't necessarily have to turn into anything, he just likes knowing he can still talk to a woman.

"Well, we wouldn't want that," Nikita drawled a little. "So I guess we'll have to take a ... what's it called? Selfie?"

That was a ridiculous name and she'd never taken one in her life. She sort of felt like she was too old for that name and activity.

"And I'll have to give you my number. Just to make sure it seems real."

Obviously she didn't, but she'd decided she wanted to, and she doubted he would object

Hopper snorts with laughter when she uses the word selfie, because there's not much that makes him feel as old as the slang that gets tossed around this place. At least Nikita seems kind of uncomfortable with it, too, which makes him feel a little bit better.

"Yeah, I'd like that," he says when she tells him she'll give him her number. "Especially because you don't seem all that comfortable with selfies either. Gotta admit, it was only 1983 for me when I got here. All this technology was still pretty incredible to me when I first got here."

He's better with it now, but only to a certain extent.

"Never even taken one, although my waitresses seem to like to. And so do some of the people I help, which really confuses me. Who wants a picture of themselves in an ambulance? Who do you even share that with?"

She was asking rhetorically, since she didn't expect him to have any answers.

"1997 for me. It didn't help much. There's still a lot of different things here."

Section's technology had been advanced enough that she hadn't been completely lost, but she'd been lost enough. And the average person from 1997 would have been more lost.

"Fourteen years on me, though," he says. "Stuff like that makes me feel really damn old, I gotta admit. I've met all these people who look older than me, but are born way after I was. Kinda messes with your head a little bit."

He tries not to let it get to him, especially after all the shit that happened in Hawkins, but it's not easy.

"I hope you're not implying I look older than you, because if you are I'm rethinking offering a selfie," she chuckled. She enjoyed this kind of banter and teasing. It made her think, but it didn't have any stakes. That never happened in Section, even with Walter. There were always stakes.

Hopper laughs and shakes his head and says, "Nah. You're far too pretty for me to ever compare myself to on any level."

Specifically, he's thinking of that ex-priest who volunteers at the Home. The guy has been born in the late sixties, when Hopper was already a young man, but he looked like he had about ten years on Hopper on a good day. He's nice enough, but it always throws Hopper off a little.

That was nicely said. There were little moments of smoothness and flirtiness here, mostly when Jim forgot what was going on, as far as she could tell. She liked it.

"Good save," she replied overly seriously. "You're forgiven. Selfie still available. And number, too."

If he called it, fine. If not, fine. That was up to him.

"I'm gonna have to take you up on that," he agrees. "The number. The selfie still makes me feel kinda old, like I'm trying to do somethin' all the kids are doin'."

He thinks Beverly will believe him without it. And mostly he's focused on the idea of having Nikita's number and being able to call her.

"But I'll use it," he says, then grins. "Unless you're just offering it to me outta pity so I can prove to my kid I talk to people."

"Fair enough. Number, no selfie," she agreed. When he asked if she was doing it out of pity, she shook her head.

"I don't do pity numbers. Either I want to give it, and then I do, or I don't, and then if you try to get it, we have a problem."

Men who tried to put hands in places they shouldn't or assume things they had no right to only did it once, if she was the one they did it to. And she didn't even really use violence, most of the time, or at least not beyond what any woman who'd taken a self defense class would.