something_incredible | (no subject)

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.

Threaded | Flat

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.