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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"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.

Hopper's not a great guy. He knows he's not a great guy. He drinks too much and he's got a temper and he's impatient and demanding. There are a lot of reasons Diane left him in the end and as much as it had hurt him at the time, and still hurts on the right days, he gets it.

One thing he can say for himself, though, is that he's never tried to force a woman into anything. His father would have kicked his ass.

"Yeah, I sure as hell wouldn't be doin' that," he says. "And not just because I think you could make me regret it."

Alcohol meant people said things they didn't intend to say, but she thought he probably would have said the same thing in the same way even before however many he'd had tonight. It made her chuckle, which might not be the normal reaction to that kind of statement, but she wasn't entirely normal.

Jim might find out more about that at some point, if only because she had some interesting scars in various places.

"See? No problem then. Here, give me your phone and I'll put my number into it."

Shifting on his seat, Hopper digs his phone out of his pocket and then starts to hand it to Nikita. He thinks better after a second, realizing he has to unlock it first, which he does, then offers it to her again.

"Don't comment on the small, sad list of contacts," he says with a grin. "Most of them are kids, which makes it even worse."

He has Beverly in there and all of Beverly's friends, wanting to know where she is and wanting to be able to get in touch with her no matter what. His own contacts are pretty limited, even after all this time here.

She smiled when he handed her the phone, realized he needed to unlock it, and handed it to her again. Booze wasn't good for thinking all that well, but at least he'd figured it out before she had to say something. She wasn't Birkoff.

"You're a parent. If you didn't have your kid and her friends in there it'd be weird," she shrugged as she entered her name in under N. She never used a last name here if she could avoid it, and the city was surprisingly accommodating to that.

The number was of the cell phone she gave everyone. She had a second one that couldn't be traced back to her, but she didn't really use it anymore. She just had it in case she needed to disappear for a bit, though. That was always a possibility, considering the life she'd led and the things she'd done.

"There." She handed the phone back. "Call, text, don't call, don't text. It's up to you."

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