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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"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."

"Usually alcohol is involved with the more ridiculous cases," he answers with a grin, then finishes the rest of his drink as if to drive home his point. Hopper knows he's done a thing or two in his time that might be considered reckless and most of those things have been done under the influence of alcohol.

He's got a problem and he knows it, but that hasn't stopped him yet.

"I think that's part of why I miss being a detective," he admits. "Usually you don't get the ridiculous stuff."

She raised her own drink and finished it off in answer to his statement, which wasn't wrong at all. The number of stupid things she'd seen kids do when they got some cheap booze was substantial. Sometimes they survived it unharmed. Sometimes they didn't. Sometimes the cops got involve, just like Jim was saying.

"Except here, maybe you only get the ridiculous stuff. Investigating why ... there's suddenly a rash of robberies by little gingerbread men or something."

It could happen around Christmas.

"Hell," he says with a laugh. "Almost makes me hope I get assigned to homicide. Except then I might be investigation a string of goblin murders."

They had killed people. Hopper knows he and Beverly had been lucky, able to wait it all out in their apartment and he knows not everyone had been able to do the same. People had died and there was nothing he could do about it.

At this point he's just glad Steve wasn't here when it all happened.

"Murders by goblins or murders of goblins?" she asked curiously. "Because if it's the latter, I don't think you'll get anyone who's willing to confess. Those things were creepy."

She'd definitely killed a few goblins, not that she'd necessarily admit that right now. She had, though, and she hadn't regretted it much.

"Maybe both?" he asks with a laugh. "Although I don't think I'd be investigating nearly as hard of it was murders of goblins. Those things were damn creepy, you're right."

He's just glad none of them had gotten close to Beverly. If they had, there would have been plenty of murdered goblins on his hands and he doesn't think he'd feel too bad about that at all.

"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.