something_incredible | (no subject)

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stan

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Hopper is trying not to panic and he's doing a shitty job of it.

Everyone he's spoken to has told him this sort of thing happens sometimes. That he's got nothing to worry about. Beverly will wake up in a few days and everything will be just fine. He'd called an ambulance earlier when he couldn't wake her, but the paramedics, once they'd realized what was happening, had mostly spent their time just trying to calm Hopper down. The hospital is going to send a nurse over in the morning just to make sure Beverly isn't dehydrated and that her vitals are still stable. Everyone keeps acting like this is normal.

Hopper has seen a lot of weird shit and none of this feels even remotely close to normal.

He can't go to work when Beverly is just lying unconscious in her bed, so he calls his supervisor and tells him what's going on. To his surprise, all he gets is a few words of comfort, his supervisor tells him to hang in there and to come back when Beverly's awake again. It's like they all just know.

Right now, he doesn't know what the hell to do. The one thing he's not doing is drinking, but he is smoking. He's smoking Beverly's cigarettes, actually, since he'd been doing a pretty good job when it comes to quitting and he'd found the pack in her backpack earlier. He's smoking like a goddamn chimney and he can't stop and when there's a knock at the door, Hopper has a cigarette dangling on his lower lip as he shuffles across the apartment to answer.

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Stan would consider himself a complete mess by the time that he makes it to the place Beverly lives now. He hasn't come here yet, but she'd given him the address and it was something he was going to do. Stan's definition of a complete mess, however, differs from the general population. Since going through a similar explanation by the nurse at the Home, Stan's managed to get dressed and wash away the sweat and the snot from his face. When he arrives at Beverly's door, he looks fairly ordinary-- except for the eyes that have clearly been crying long and hard, the sheer white terror on his face, the scars that stand out brilliantly on his face.

A massive man answers the door, and Stan sucks in a breath. "Hello, sir," he says. "I'm Looking for Beverly. I'm-- I'm her friend and I was worried that--" His voice breaks a little despite his best efforts. "Is she here?"

Hopper has never seen this kid before. He's met most of Beverly's friends at this point, he's had plenty of interaction with the one that does the voices and swears too damn much and Eddie, too, who constantly seems like he's about to vibrate into pieces from anxiety, but he's never met this one before. Doesn't mean much. He could be a kid from school, or someone new, someone from Derry like the other two.

Doesn't matter, though. The kid looks like a wreck and Hopper steps back to let him into the apartment.

"Yeah," he says. "She's here. She's, uh... kinda fast asleep." He rubs a hand across his eyes, then stubs his cigarette out in a nearby ashtray and looks at the kid again. "How many of the kids at the Home are asleep, too?"

There's no way he'd be here looking for Beverly, looking like he's been crying, if everything at the Home was just fine.

Under other circumstances, Stan would be fucking terrified of the guy and of going into a place he's never seen.

Then again, he'd gone into a blood-soaked bathroom in a much worse building than this, because it was for Beverly. He'd gone into Neibolt for Beverly. And this guy might scare Stan a little bit shitless, but Bev wouldn't stay here if he was bad.

He wouldn't talk to Stan this way either.

So Stan steps in and lets the door close, trying to breathe evenly as he processes. "She's asleep too?" and there's no hiding how it guts him. "I-- everyone is. I mean, the everyone that matters to me. Eddie and Richie and Jamie, and the nurse says it's just fine, but it's not fine. Everyone's--"

He pushes the heels of his hands against his eyes, trying to steel himself. "Thank you for telling me," he whispers.

"Christ, kid," Hopper says, feeling a surge of affection for him. He's obviously messed up and Beverly's friends might drive Hopper nuts some of the time, because teenage boys are a pain in the ass, but they care about her. That's what Hopper cares about most. Besides, he's still got a soft spot for kids. Maybe they drive him nuts, but ever since becoming a dad, he'd felt this need to look out for them even when they're not his own.

"Come on, you can see her," he tells the kid. "Do you want some water or somethin'? I can make you a sandwich."

He pauses halfway down the hall, then turns back. "I'm Hopper. Uh, Jim Hopper, but most of Beverly's friends just call me Hopper or Hop. Whatever you want."

"Thank you," says Stan, trying to keep his voice from sounding as small as he feels, following Hopper down the hallway. "I'm Stanley Uris. Stan. I'm from. I'm From Derry, too. Like Beverly. We were friends there, except I guess now she's-- they're all older than me now." He thinks he might be babbling a little, but he really wants Hopper to know that Beverly means so much to him, to all of them.

In a very respectful way.

"Maybe that's why it didn't take me too, whatever it is," he adds, very quietly. He wants to wring his hands, but there's a scabby scar forming on the palm of one.

"Because you're younger than the rest of 'em?" Hopper asks, then shrugs as he continues to lead Stan down the hall to Beverly's room. "Hell if I know, kid, if there are rules to this thing, then I don't know 'em."

He wishes he did. Everyone might say this kind of thing happens sometimes, like it's just an exceptionally rainy day during a dry season, but he doesn't feel that comfortable with it. No one else seems to be able to tell him what rules there might be, just enough to say she'll be fine, she'll wake up in a few days, and it's nothing to worry about.

Well, he's goddamn worried. Every time he looks at Beverly right now, he remembers what Sara looked like, small and frail, pale and so still under her hospital blankets.

"I'm not supposed to be younger than them," Stan says, not able to hide the abject misery in his tone. "I just got here later than them." Too late, his mind supplies, and he swallows down what feels like bile. But he nods in response to what Hopper says, partially because it seems pretty clear that the man doesn't care for the random nature of whatever this either.

"Has--" Stan's not sure how loudly he should be talking, which is a stupid thing to worry about, but there he is. "Has Beverly lived here for long? With you?"

"'Bout a year and a half," he answers after giving it a moment of thought. "She'd been staying with me part time before that, but we got everything officially done about a year and a half ago, yeah."

She'd been staying with him ever since the blood had come out of the shower in the home, but Hopper figures he probably shouldn't say that to Stan. Not when the kid looks pretty damn distraught to begin with.

"Hey, Bev," Hopper says as he opens the door to her bedroom, although he has no idea if she can hear him. "One of your friends is here to see you."

"That's-- that's good," Stan says, careful, remembering how she'd sounded on the phone when she'd called for help at the apartment, how they had understood a lot about her father from that call and from their time cleaning the blood from the bathroom. "I'm glad she has a good place to live now. Did she tell you much about Derry? Where we used to live?"

If anyone is going to be able to tell if an adult isn't trustworthy, he knows it's Bev. That she's chosen to live here for so long, this guy is safe, even if he's scary.

But then Hopper opens the door, and Stan can see Beverly on her bed, as fast asleep as the others, and a little sob catches in his throat. He stumbles over at a rapid pace, kneeling down beside her and taking her hand gingerly. "Bev," he whispers. "Please. Why won't any of you wake up?"

"Yeah," he says, his voice low. "Yeah, I know enough."

He knows he would kill Beverly's father if he were to ever show up here in Darrow. Hopper would shoot him in the head, make it as clean as possible, then take the body somewhere he knows it would never be found. For the most part, he knows he's not the best guy in the world, but he's a good police officer and he has no respect for dirty cops, but damned if he wouldn't use some of those shady connections to make sure he got away with murder to keep Beverly's father far, far from her.

It feels a bit like he's intruding on a private moment when Stan goes rushing over to Beverly, so Hopper busies himself cleaning up some of the homework on her desk. He stacks her books, his back to the bed, then rearranges her pens and pencils. None of it matters. He just wants to give the kid a moment.

Stan steals another look at Hopper, approving of the general tone in regards to Derry, and many of its residents, especially Beverly's father. After all, Stan knows something about a controlling parent, even if his own father had never matched the fucked up-ness of Bev's or maybe Eddie's mom's.

He bows back down over Beverly's hand.

"I know, I know you're not going to answer. I don't even know if you remember-- down there, where we almost lost you," he whispers, and it kind of feels like a prayer should. "At least you're safe here. I think I should watch Richie and Eddie. You've probably been doing it on your own, so it's my turn."

Stan smooths a piece of her hair. He would never dare to be this open with anyone if they were awake, he thinks, but maybe if they do wake up, he can be a better friend. "Just please wake up again, okay? Please." His voice cracks a little, and he squeezes his eyes shut for a second.

And then he stands, turning back around to face Hopper. "Thank you. For, for letting me see her."

For taking care of her.

"Yeah," he says, adjusting Beverly's backpack. "Yeah, of course, kid. Not gonna keep you away from your friend."

As much as he wants to keep all boys away from Beverly, he knows that's messed up and he knows just because someone is a boy doesn't mean they're interested in being more than friends with her. It's taken Hopper a long time to accept that as reality, but it's the truth, he knows it now, and he knows Beverly's friends mean the world to her. There's no way in hell he would keep them apart.

"You're gonna keep an eye on the other ones?" he asks. "The ones stuck at the Home?"

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