something_incredible | [september 20]

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[september 20]

It's true Hopper has been drinking tonight, but he's not drunk. That's something he's been doing his best to keep from Beverly, getting drunk only when he's away from their apartment and only when someone else is going to be there with her, one of her friends or Steve, and he never takes any of the pills when he's going to have to look after her in any way. He's being responsible.

A responsible alcoholic, he's well aware of it, but responsible all the same.

So he's had a beer or two tonight, but nothing that's going to end with him face down on the couch, no matter how badly he might want to. Something's been going on with her anyway and that's the sort of shit he has to focus on right now instead of his own issues.

For as long as she's been living here, she's had nightmares. Hopper's aware of that and he figures, given the shit with her father, that makes sense. He's never known what to do with it, though. It's not like it happens every night as far as he knows, just some of the time, and it's not like she's the only person in the world who has nightmares now and then. Sometimes he dreams about Sara dying all over again, has nightmares about her teeth falling out along with her hair, but he doesn't talk about them and he figures Beverly doesn't want to either. If she did, she would.

But they seem worse lately. He's been waking up more often to find her already awake or he's heard her moving around in the middle of the night. He still doesn't know what to do about it, though, if there's something he should be saying to her, so he's going with the only thing he does know.

Offering her whatever the hell she wants.

"Hey," he says when she gets in from school. It's Friday, they've got the whole weekend ahead of them. "What d'you wanna do tonight? Anything."

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Beverly is used to keeping things hidden. For as long as she can remember, even with the people she cares about the most, it's been a way of keeping herself safe, in no small part because, until a couple years ago, there was no one in her life fitting that description at all. Now, she has people she trusts, but it's still easier to keep some things to herself. She doesn't want to give too much away, and besides, there are things she wouldn't know how to talk about even if she tried. There are things she doesn't entirely remember, too, but even with the ones she does, they're better just kept carefully put away, buried as deep as she can get them.

So she knows she's been particularly out of sorts lately, the recurring dreams that have plagued her since right around the time she got here seeming more vivid, more present. She knows, too, that there's a good chance she's not passing herself off as being as okay as she would like to, and that Hopper is bound to catch on if he hasn't already. He's got his own shit going on too, though — she's distracted, but not entirely oblivious, not enough that she isn't aware that something hasn't been quite right — and so as much as she trusts him, she can't help but hope he doesn't know.

Either way, something to take her mind off all of it might be exactly what she needs. She's tired when she gets in, but not so much so that she's about to collapse on the couch and not move all night or anything. She just needs to shake school off, and maybe do something both fun and normal to get out of her own head.

"I don't know," she says, but she smiles a little as she does. "Um... Dinner and finding something to watch is always good. Or if we wanna go out, there's always the boardwalk, or, I don't know, bowling or something."

"Yeah, hey, they've still got some games and stuff open on the boardwalk, right?" he asks. "It won't get too cold for awhile yet."

Bowling's fun, too, but that's something they can do once the winter weather moves in and the snow closes down the outdoor stuff that keeps the boardwalk lively during the summer. The air is a bit cooler now, but really only at night, and it sure as hell isn't nearly cold enough to keep people from going out. Maybe a crowd is just what they need.

"We can buy a bunch of tickets for those games and see who wins the most," he says with a crooked grin. "Whoever loses has to buy dinner."

It's a bet he'll never follow through with, because he'll never make her pay for dinner. The money Darrow gives her is for her. He wants her to save it for school.

"Yeah, I think everything's still open until next month or something," Beverly says, one corner of her mouth curling up a little higher. She doesn't pay much attention to when things close, just finds out when it happens, but she knows they're still open now. It really does sound fun, too, more so the more she thinks about it. Maybe something like that is just what she needs, a night out enjoying herself to take her mind off things, to remind herself that she's not the woman she saw in her dreams. Not now, at least not yet, and not for a long time. She's not alone, for one. Whatever is going on and whatever both of them aren't talking about, she has Hopper, and that makes her a hell of a lot better off than she was at home.

"So, okay, you're on." She doesn't think he would actually expect her to pay for dinner, but that doesn't mean she won't put all she can into winning anyway. Bragging rights are on the line. Fortunately, she's got pretty damn good aim.

"Deal," he says with a lopsided grin, then goes to grab one of his flannel shirts to throw over the t-shirt he's wearing. Maybe on their way, he'll figure out the right words to bring up what she's dealing with. Chances are pretty damn slim, it's not like he has Joyce here to help walk him through all the shit he doesn't know how to say, but he might come up with something on his own. Maybe.

"Got your shoes?" he asks as he puts his boots on, then grabs his keys and wallet. "You wanna take a cab over or walk?"

It isn't too far, but he doesn't want to drive. Not with the drinks he's already had. And a cab leaves him free to have another if he wants, which he's trying not to do around Beverly, but one beer won't look too bad.

"Got 'em," Beverly says as she shoves her feet into her boots, leaving them loose and unlaced on her way to grab her bag and a sweatshirt. It's still warm out, but with the breeze off the ocean, it gets chilly by the beach at night. She doesn't want to cut a night short just because she underestimates the weather and gets cold. Even if she's felt off-kilter lately, she thinks this might help. If nothing else, throwing herself into something else to focus on can't hurt. Just sitting around here, she's likely to have a harder time pretending there's nothing going on than if she goes out and does something.

"And maybe walk? We can always get a cab back if we don't feel like walking later." It isn't that far to the boardwalk. Besides, it's Friday night. By the time they managed to hail a cab, they'd probably be halfway there on foot already.

Sometimes she reminds him so much of Eleven that it makes his chest ache. It isn't in the way she looks, though they do share the same sort of mop of curly hair, and it isn't in the way she speaks, because Beverly says about ten times as many words as Eleven ever had. It's just something in the way she moves. She shoves her feet into her boots in the same way Eleven yanked on her sneakers. She grabs her sweatshirt the same way Eleven would reach for her jacket.

It's not all girls of that age. Hopper just thinks maybe he and a certain type of kid get along.

"Yeah, we can walk," he agrees with a grin, giving her hair a rub, tousling it. "You think any of your friends are gonna want to join us?"

Beverly makes a face, her nose scrunching, when he ruffles her hair, but it's a good-natured grimace. She would never outright say so, but it says a lot that she doesn't mind the contact, that she doesn't even think twice about it. Instead, her expression softening into a smile, she shrugs. "I can text Eddie and Richie," she says, though she isn't dead-set on having company. A lot of the kids she knows from school seem to be losing interest in spending time with their parents, but she likes hanging out with Hopper, maybe because she never really felt like she had a parent before.

"I don't know if they'd want to sign up for me to kick their asses at boardwalk games, though."

"What, they're not used to it by now?" Hopper asks with a grin. Beverly's not the sort to let anyone win just because they're friends and he has to figure she's beat both those boys at plenty of games.

He doesn't mind, though, if it's just the two of them. Sara never got to this age, but he had always loved taking her out on his own. Being with her and her alone meant they got to build up their relationship and he had wanted that, both for himself and for Diane. He'd thought it important they both have alone time with their daughter.

With Eleven it had been much of the same. They'd been alone together by necessity, but he'd still loved it.

"If they're not, they should be," Beverly says with a smile of her own. It's maybe a little bit of an exaggeration, but she thinks the others learned quickly back home that she's capable of holding her own and then some. At least with boardwalk games, there are no stakes but bragging rights, though she'll gladly take those. Still, she's not entirely sure they need the company. She spends plenty of time with her friends, and she probably doesn't need to subject Hopper to more time than is necessary around teenage boys. She can always catch up with them later.

"What about you? Ready to lose?"

"That's big talk for someone so small," he says as they exit the apartment and start to head for the boardwalk. "Is that trash talk? Is that what the kids call it?"

Slang has always been a bit weird to Hopper, but jumping from the eighties to now has changed the way teenagers talk and a lot of the time he feels like he has no idea what they're saying. Beverly is from the same time period he is, at least close enough, but she's also a teenager. Catching on to new slang is what they do, he figures.

He had never really felt old or out of touch until Sara died. It's a little bit better in Darrow and he knows the reason why is walking beside him right now.

"I believe that is what the kids call it," Beverly says with a laugh. Truthfully, she still feels, and has always felt, a bit out of step with the other people her age in Darrow. She's at least not as violently unpopular as she was back in Derry, but with twenty years between the world she remembers and the time she's in now, she doesn't quite fit among her peers. Then again, the life she's had would probably accomplish that, too. Still, at least she's not completely clueless. It's hard not to pick up on things that she hears all the time.

"And hey, size doesn't have anything to do with it. I can't help if if I'm just that good." Smiling as they step outside, she feels lighter than she has in a while now. It's a nice break from the shit that so often rattles around her head.

It's good to see her smile. A lot of the time Hopper isn't sure about what he's doing, if he's being a good guardian or if he's just falling into the same traps he had before. He tries not to spend as much time away from home as he had with Sara, because if there's one thing he regrets more than all others, it's having put his job ahead of her like that.

There was just always more time. It's what he'd always believed. He knows better than that now and while he's still not perfect and still works too many late nights, he's trying. He's aware.

"I'm a cop remember," he says. "I got really good aim. We do one of those games where you have to move somethin' with a water gun and I think you're goin' down."

"Yeah, well, we do one where you throw things to knock stuff down and I'm definitely winning," Beverly counters. For one single, satisfying instant, she remembers hurling a rock at Henry Bowers's head and seeing the blood on his forehead a moment later. It was a long time coming, really, and it was the day they brought Mike into the fold. She thinks it was a pretty good decision, all things considered. She has the sense not to tell Hopper about the time she threw a rock at someone's head, though, not sure it would go over quite as well as it had with her friends. Still, she's pretty sure she's got this.

"I actually feel like you might have an unfair advantage in the water gun game, so maybe we just shouldn't do that one."

"What? So we can play a game you're good at but not the one I'm good at?" he asks, laughing. "I dunno, kid, that doesn't really seem fair. If I'm gonna be buying you dinner, I wanna at least think there was a chance I might've won."

Hell, he'll happily lose to her on purpose, but he can't help but give her a hard time about it.

"I'm not gonna go down that easy," he warns as they near the boardwalk. The lights are bright, colours flashing. It'd be hard to feel crappy here.

"You have, like, training and stuff," Beverly points out, though she's really only teasing. She might know she has good aim, but he's learned how to shoot, which could be construed as a pretty unfair advantage. She has no intention of letting it be one, though, certain she'll be good enough at whatever games they play that she'll be able to beat him, and that even if he loses, he'll be the one buying dinner. The only thing really on the line is bragging rights, and she won't give those up so easily. "But hey, that's fine. I can still win anyway."

It's nice out here, the lights bright, the weather just about beginning to feel like fall with the breeze off the ocean. This could be — God, she hopes — exactly the distraction she needs.

"Hey, maybe I'm just a natural," he answers. "Never had any training and just stepped into bein' a cop without even having to pass a test."

That isn't even remotely true and he's sure she knows it. Having been in Vietnam means he's had a lot of training. Too much, he thinks sometimes, too much training just to be out there killing people. He'd hated being there, but a lot of men hadn't and Hopper is still grateful none of those men had been ones he'd known very well at all.

That's not what he wants to think about now, though, and he nods at the ticket booth where they can buy what they need to play the boardwalk games. "C'mon," he says. "Tickets are on me, maybe it'll even out when you have to buy dinner."

"I'm pretty sure that's not how it works," Beverly says, laughing. He's the expert, but she's not about to be so easily duped. She wouldn't really insist that they not play a game on that basis, though, confident enough in her ability to hold her own against him, and in the fact that, no matter what he says, he'll be the one buying dinner. Out here on the boardwalk, those aren't even particularly high stakes. Pizza and fries, or whatever other junk food, wouldn't actually set her back too far. She's not about to say that, though, and risk sounding like she's admitting defeat.

The line at the ticket booth isn't too long, probably the benefit of the time of year. Standing just a few people back, she shifts her weight a little, restless as they wait, though not unpleasantly so. "Wow. Sure enough that you're gonna win that you're putting money into it already," she teases. "Well, don't let me stop you."

He likes teasing her. It's the kind of stuff he used to do with Sara, then Eleven, and he can't help himself. For a long time, he knows no one would have described him as happy and he thinks he still carries that certain level of grumpiness into most of his life, but he's always better around kids.

Within a few minutes, they've got their tickets to play the boardwalk games and Hopper hands Beverly half of them before he surveys their options.

"Okay, you've got first pick," he says. "Tell me where to go."

Beverly pauses as she glances around, her expression exaggeratedly thoughtful. There aren't really any bad options with something like this, and it isn't like they're limited to just one game. After a brief look at the different games on offer, she nods in the direction of one where the goal is to throw little beanbags at a set of concentric circles, aiming to get as close to the middle as possible.

The one with darts to try to pop balloons with, she quickly decides they can skip.

"Let's try that one," she says. "Look good?"

"Hell, yeah," he answers. "You know I played beanbags professionally for awhile, right? Almost made it onto the Olympic team before I damaged my rotator cuff and had to give it all up to be a cop instead."

Somehow he manages to say it all with a straight face. He doesn't break, not even a little, even goes so far as to start rolling his shoulders as if limbering up the old, injured arm.

"You're in trouble," he says to Beverly, then finally grins as he hands his tickets over to the game attendant.

"Beanbags are so not an Olympic sport," Beverly says with a laugh, unable to keep the amusement from her expression. "No way, I am not falling for that." He'd be pretty convincing if she weren't completely sure he's making it up. It won't make any difference one way or the other in trying to beat each other in this game, anyway. He'll put up a good fight, but she's determined not to let him walk away with bragging rights here.

"You wanna go first?"

"Letting the champ take the first shot," he says, as if it's a terrible idea. "Alright, kid, it's your funeral."

With a beanbag in hand, Hopper steps forward and lines up his throw. It's actually a pretty decent shot, though not perfect, and he narrows his eyes before taking a step back and sweeping his arm toward the game as an indication for Beverly to take her turn.

"Okay, second to the middle," he says of his own throw. "Not bad, but I bet you can do better."

"We'll see," Beverly says, though she's grinning, confident, as she does. She'd thought this might be a good distraction, and so far, it's already seeming to be, just enough to keep her from getting too stuck in her head for a while. If she could, she would tell him just how much it means to her to be able to do things like this, to go out and have fun together, to feel safe, but she's not sure she'll ever really have the words. She would have to veer too close to too many unpleasant truths in order to do so, and some subjects are better left unaddressed. Still, she appreciates it.

Taking careful aim, she eyes the target for a moment, then lobs the beanbag towards it. It looks, for a moment, like it might land right in the middle; instead, it winds up draped over the edge between the center and the ring around it. She shrugs, though, satisfied enough. "I'll take it."

"You sure you weren't up for the Olympic beanbag team?" he asks as the proprietor of the game resets, taking Beverly's bag off the board and moving away to give them another chance. "You've been hustling me, huh?"

They're actually probably pretty well matched, just something about the fact that they both have good aim. Hopper likes that, though, he likes seeing a skill like that coming out of her and he grins as he takes another shot.

The one sails straight through the middle and he gives Beverly a smug grin. "See what you can do with that."

"Maybe I would've been if they had one," Beverly quips, shooting him a grin. It's all a little ridiculous, but she likes that. Being able to joke around like this is nice, and still something that feels sort of new to her. She's been in Darrow for a while now, and lived with Hopper for a while, too, but part of her still isn't used to having friends and people to count on. For a long time, she was virtually on her own. She tries to push aside the little voice in the back of her head that tells her she will again, the awful images from that dream that she thinks was about her. That isn't what she needs to be thinking about right now.

At least this makes for a good distraction. She has no intention of letting Hopper win, which means she needs to do at least as well as he does in their little competition. Taking a deep breath, she gives herself a moment, then tosses the beanbag straight through the center ring.

She beams as she turns towards Hopper again. "You were saying about the Olympic team?"

Edited 2019-11-17 09:10 (UTC)

"Yeah, you've been hustling me," he says. "Damn, kid, and here I thought I could trust you."

He's clearly teasing, wearing a bright grin as he tosses his next bean bag and it misses the centre again. Beverly is going to win this one, but not for lack of his trying. He doesn't mind, though, either way, he's going to be paying for dinner, no matter what kind of bet they've made.

"One more throw," the man at the booth says, giving Beverly her last bean bag.

"Hey, I told you I had good aim," Beverly points out with a grin. She's not sure it counts as hustling when she was upfront about that, but she also knows this is all in fun anyway. A little competitive spirit is hardly a bad thing, especially when she knows dinner isn't really at stake here. Even if it were, it wouldn't matter all that much. Boardwalk food isn't all that expensive.

Taking the beanbag, she says, "Alright, let's go for the win here." These things are mostly rigged and she knows it, but it's not like she's trying to beat the game, just trying to beat Hopper. And she really, really wants to win. He's tough, but she's good at this, and when she gives her last throw, it lands exactly where she wants it to. "Yes!"

"Damn," he says, knowing he's not going to beat that, but he really doesn't mind at all either. He's just happy to have gotten her out of the house, to see her smiling. Making people feel better isn't exactly something he's known for being very good at, but he's trying.

"What would you like?" the man at the booth asks. "You for the top score, so you can pick any of the prizes on the top row."

They're mostly stuffed animals, too big to be practical, but Hopper nods at the giant pink gorilla. "He's so damn ugly. You should take him."

"Yeah, okay, I want that one," Beverly replies with a laugh, pointing to the pink gorilla. She has what she really wanted here — bragging rights — and it's not like she would rather have had any of the other prizes. They're all about the same level of ridiculous, so it doesn't really matter much. This one is especially so, though, and she grins as the man at the booth gets it down and hands it to her. What the hell she's going to do with a giant stuffed pink gorilla, she has no idea, but she's still going to enjoy her victory.

"I think that gives me the lead," she says as they walk away from the booth. "Ready to admit defeat yet?"

"Oh, hell no," Hopper answers, then points to the booth with the water guns. It's straight forward enough, they shoot water into a target and try to make their little car get to the end of the racetrack -- a straight line, not much of a track -- before the other person.

This is something he's pretty sure he'll win. Which will only make them even and he'll still buy her dinner.

"We're heading there next," he says. "And I'm gonna kick your ass."

"In your dreams," Beverly says with a short laugh, though she has a feeling the advantage in this game will be his. Aiming with a water gun is probably somewhat different than aiming with a real gun, but it's got to be close enough, and he's the one who has experience with the latter. She doesn't intend to just admit that, though, or surrender without giving it her all. If he wins, she means to see to it that it's not by much, but she's hardly about to act like he's won before they've even started.

"Come on, we're doing this."

"You think your pink gorilla's gonna help with your aim?" he asks and it's pretty sad trash talk, but it's not like he can really give her a hard time the way he might have with one of his buddies.

Stepping forward, he pays for the two of them to play, and he's enjoying this is a hell of a lot more than he would if there was a crowd here tonight. It's just the two of them playing these games and he has to admit, that's how he likes it best.

"You ready?" he asks once they've both got their water guns in hand.

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[september 20]

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