[september 20]

[something_incredible]

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."

Comments

[runtowardsomething]

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."