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The first meeting is hard.

Hopper sits at the back, not hunched into his seat exactly, just there, unwilling to draw too much attention to himself. He knows he isn't ready to talk. Not yet. He's not ready to introduce himself, he's not ready to tell people he's an alcoholic, he just isn't. And no one seems particularly inclined to push him, which he likes.

But it's still damn hard just sitting here. He listens to the stories people tell, the laughter they share, the woman sitting not far from him who sniffles occasionally as she tries to hide her tears. He isn't sure what he's supposed to do there, if he's meant to comfort her or say something, but in the end he doesn't do anything. He only sits there, hands in his lap, and listens to everyone else.

The worst of his withdrawal symptoms are gone. He hasn't had a drink since that awful afternoon, has been utterly, stone cold sober for twenty days now. The meetings are supposed to help and he figures he's got to at least give them a chance, but sitting there in the basement of the church, Hopper mostly just feels twitchy and uncertain, and going off to the bar after all this seems like a really good idea.

He doesn't. Instead, as the meeting ends and people head out, he falls in step and then lights up a cigarette once he's through the church doors. Never in his life has Hopper been a religious man and that isn't going to change, so he feels strange even just standing here, but this is where he is now. This is what he's got to do.

He just wishes it didn't sit on top his skin so uncomfortably, like a coat that just doesn't quite fit.

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Daniel wasn't usually at the church on a weekday, but Father Morgan had asked him to come by and look at something. The church was real old, which meant some of the things in it were from Daniel's era and not this one. Who knew being from 1946 would be useful now and then?

He ended up being done right about the time the AA meeting let out, so he let most of the people go past and then went behind him. His leg had been playing up recently - probably the change in the weather - so he'd gone back to his crutch instead of his cane. He stopped once he got out the door to get himself situated and nodded respectfully at the man smoking outside while he was doing it.

Probably he'd been at the meeting, and in that case, Daniel respected him already. Knowing there was a problem and doing something about it took guts. And he looked kind of familiar from somewhere, too, although Daniel wasn't gonna mention that. The whole thing about those meetings was no names, right?

"Nice night," he said easily. If the man wanted to talk, he would.

The guy is familiar, though when Hopper thinks back to the meeting, he can't recall seeing him in any of the seats. He'd spent longer than he probably should have, surreptitiously studying the folks around him, not because he'd been looking for something to use against them, but because he'd wanted to find similarities. Something he might share with them besides the fact that they'd all probably tried to drink themselves to death at one point or another.

So no, this guy isn't from the meeting, but Hopper nods at him anyway. He'll place it soon enough.

"It's a night," he answers. Maybe it's nice. Right now all he feels is heavy.

Daniel half-chuckled at the reaction. It was kind of what he had expected.

"Yeah, I've had those nights. And days. And weeks."

The man was at a meeting for people who were dealing with a problem. A little dark humor was probably the right call.

That sort of shit is the kind most anyone can relate to, Hopper figures. Everyone has gone through some really bad stuff in their life and this guy, holding that crutch, he's probably had his share of it, too. He knows he isn't special in that regard, it's just that he apparently can't handle his shit very well.

It hits him then, where he knows the guy from.

"Precinct two, right?" he asks. "You're, uh... shit, I don't know your name, but I've seen you there."

"Yeah, precinct two," Daniel replied, and waved away the comment about not knowing his name.

"All us analysts, we sorta blend into the background. Just sitting at our computers typing away. Or poking at the keys with two fingers and then squinting and doing it again, depending on who you are."

He was both, and he was trying to respect the lack of names at the meeting.

The guy wasn't in the meeting, he's sure of that now, so Hopper figures it's up to him whether or not he wants to deal in names. The whole anonymity thing feels weird to him, like he's trying to hide something he's supposed to be ashamed of.

He's not proud of this, but he doesn't think he should be ashamed of it either. How the hell is he ever going to get any better if he keeps trying to hide it?

"Jim Hopper," he says, sticking his cigarette between his lips and offering his hand. "I'm a detective with the third precinct."

"Daniel Sousa," he replied easily, since they were doing names. Names were fine with him if they were fine with Detective Hopper.

"I don't get to Third Precinct too often. Most of the stuff I handle, it goes through the computer, which is still a little weird for me. It doesn't seem weird for anyone else, though."

Some parts of him would always be stuck in 1946.

"Yeah, they take some getting used to," Hopper agrees. Most of his paperwork he tries to pawn off on others, but that doesn't work most of the time and he ends up having to stay late to get it all done. He just hates the damn computer systems and he would almost rather go back to using a typewriter, though he'd hated that thing, too.

"Not from 2020 or whatever the hell year it is now?" he asks.

Daniel huffed a laugh, but it wasn't much of one and there wasn't a lot of humor in it.

"Not even a little bit," he replied. "It was 1946 when I went to get some truly bad coffee from the office percolator and ended up outside a train station here. What about you? Typewriter, computer, or some kind of crazy intelligent robot thing?"

"Typewriter," Hopper says with a rough laugh. "And I hated that thing when it was new, too. It was 1983 when I ended up here."

Which means he'd been just a little guy when Daniel had been an adult. It's a weird thing to think, especially since he's clearly the older of the two of them.

"Back in '46 I was only three," he says, looking amused. "Christ."

"Yeah, I look pretty good for a hundred," Daniel joked, because how the hell else was he supposed to deal with being the age he was in the time he was?

"I didn't really like the typewriter either. They made me learn in OCS so they could make me do stupid reports, which probably had something to do with not liking it."

Hopper gives a snort of laughter and says, "Yeah, seems like pretty much everything is made up of reports. Doesn't matter when or where you're from."

Especially when it comes to law enforcement. If Hopper could spend as much time actively doing police work as he does having to fill our forms, he thinks he might have a much higher solve rate, though his is already pretty good, especially for someone new to the detective team.

"See, that's something the future needed to have fixed instead of making 'smartphones', but somehow no one asks me how I think things should be," Daniel shrugged. "I tell you, I'd have some suggestions."

Starting with not losing his leg, but not just that. For all that he'd been through discussion groups, he would never say he was glad of it, even if he'd mostly accepted it by now.

Now that he's used to it, Hopper kind of likes his phone. He hates making phone calls, so the ability to text Beverly is something he likes, and having all his pictures at his fingertips makes him pretty happy, too. It takes care of the tedious shit of paying bills and going to the bank and he's got a pretty good Scrabble game going with the cute redhead down in evidence, so all in all, he's happy with his phone.

"Dating apps," he says. "I don't dislike much about the future technology, but those things freak me the hell out."

"Yeah, I ain't touchin one of those with a ten foot pole," Daniel agreed. He was a little lonely, and would maybe like to date more, but he wasn't using an app to do it.

"I'm not saying nobody's ever lied on a date in person, but it seems real easy to lie on one of those things. Reminds me of a fella I used to work with before. He had a wife and at least two girlfriends. He woulda loved a dating app."

Hopper might be the sort of man to get around when he wants to, which he's done plenty of here, but when he's with someone, really with them, the thought of straying makes him feel pretty goddamn gross. The thought of a man with a wife and two girlfriends doesn't sit too well with him. Not if the three women involved don't know about each other and have given their permission. He's seen stuff like that here and while he doesn't really get it, at least everyone involved is being transparent.

For a liar, he really hates other liars.

"Just seems like a good way for things to get messed up," he agrees

"You ain't kiddin. He died in the line of duty and our boss called his wife and then two other fellas called his girlfriends. I didn't notice anything weird at the funeral, so I'm hoping they all managed to not notice each other."

This was kind of a weird conversation to be having, but Daniel had had a lot of weird conversations since he joined up. A lot more after he'd gotten hit, even.

"Christ," he says. "My wife would've found a way to raise me from the dead just to kill me again if I ever did somethin' like that. Uh, ex-wife, I guess, but y'know. At the time."

After the divorce, but before Darrow, Diane had mostly just pitied him. Hopper figures he'd deserved it. Calling her drunk, listening to her new baby cry when their baby was in the ground. There was nothing good about that.

Daniel chuckled.

"My wife woulda done the same thing. Good thing neither of us was ever that stupid. Well, not about that, anyway."

He wasn't wearing a wedding ring and the tan line had even faded, but he was still gonna call Peggy his wife. Ex-wife wasn't right, but late wife wasn't either.

Hopper had done plenty of stupid things in his life. Still does on a pretty regular basis and he can't imagine ever wanting to cheat on Diane. At the time, he'd been so sure she would be it for him. The love of his life.

He's not so sure about that anymore. Hasn't been for a long time.

"She's not here, huh?" he asks, having looked down for a ring and finding none.

"Not anymore," Daniel replied. It didn't hurt so much to talk about this now, not like it had at first. It was like his leg. At first, it hurt a hell of a lot. Now it hurt less. It never didn't hurt at all, but this didn't either.

Hopper nods, because that's about what he figured. This place is a shit like that. It takes from people when they've found something good and he lives most days in fear it's going to take Beverly from him, too.

"Yeah, there was someone here," he says. "I liked her a lot. Dunno if she'd ever wanna marry a guy like me, but it doesn't matter much now."

Daniel nodded, because he understood what Hopper was saying.

"I got real drunk when my wife disappeared. The therapists at the hospital talked all about coping strategies and healthy behavior, and I get that, but ... I still got real drunk."

Hopper snorts and gestures to where they are with his nearly finished cigarette. "Yeah, I never was much of one for healthy coping strategies myself."

He'd gotten drunk when Diane left him and then nearly every day since then, including the day he realized Lucy was gone.

"I kinda think they go together, but they'd probably disagree with me," Daniel shrugged. "I'm no headshrinker, but there are times when talking to someone helps and there are times when it doesn't."

When it didn't, maybe people got a little drunk. Or maybe they got a lot drunk.

It isn't that simple. Maybe for some people it is, but not for Hopper. For a long time he had denied it, pretended like his drinking wasn't really an issue, but he knows it is now. There's nothing else it could be.

"Lucky for you it didn't turn into a problem then," he says, a little gruff. Because he sure as hell can't say the same for himself.

"Probably," Daniel agreed, because he knew it sure could have gone the other way. And he didn't usually talk about this on a first conversation, but Hopper was a cop, he'd lost some people, and something about him also said soldier. Daniel got all of that.

"I knew men who did have it turn into a problem. Everyone comes back from a war missing some pieces."

He came back missing mostly physical pieces, but everyone came back missing some kind of pieces.

Grantaire doesn't talk much, today; when he first dragged himself back from falling abruptly and embarrassingly off the wagon after Neil left, he waited until nearly the end to say anything and then sort of rambled, to an understanding group of what he's realized are friends.

Today it's just listening, existing as he likes to in the periphery of other spaces. As always, even as he nods along with stories and keeps himself from interrupting, he people-watches a bit.

He's aware of Hopper as a person, in general, though they're in no way close. He lives in the same building as Eponine, and he thinks he takes care of one of her friends, but that's about where his knowledge ends. Still, Grantaire has been a new face, and he notices the other man's unease and glancing around the room; his reticence around the parts of the meeting that involve invoking a higher spirit -- all of it with a very personal understanding.

The end of any meeting of alcoholics is a cluster of transferred vices. Most linger a little, standing around the coffee machine with paper cups or in small groups wound in various kinds of smoke, outside the front door. Grantaire digs his own pack out and leans against the wall not far from Hopper to light it. This habit, too, has gotten a bit more expensive since Neil left.

"First meeting?" he asks as he does, and he doesn't mean here.

It was a decision he made without even realizing why he was making it, sticking around to have his smoke. Staying here, staying within the vicinity of the meeting and its group, it marks Hopper as one of them, which he is, even if he hasn't gotten up to say it yet. He's wondering now if he'd done it on purpose, stuck around just to see if someone would talk to him. If maybe he could say a thing or two in a one-on-one scenario.

At the question, he turns, looking the guy straight on. Then he nods.

"Yeah," he says, then exhales a plume of smoke into the air. "First meeting. Sorta kept my mouth shut in there. Maybe I shouldn't have."

"It's hard, the first time." Grantaire takes a drag on his own cigarette and huffs out a laugh with a puff of smoke. "And many times thereafter, depending on if you talk through nerves. If you think you need to be here, it's a good thing to just have walked through the door."

He offers a hand. "I'm Grantaire. Usually I talk more than I did tonight. It's been a rough summer."

"If you do want to talk, about why you came or, fuck it, how work's been, the weather, there's not much that shocks me," he offers with a small smile.

It's obvious to Hopper, as he reaches out to shake Grantaire's hand, that he's been doing this for awhile. He doesn't know what to think about that, how to wrap his head around the idea of coming back here week after week and never being able to escape it.

The thought is depressing.

"Hopper," he says. "Uh, Jim Hopper, but you can call me either."

This is supposed to be anonymous, but fuck it, his face is here. And he's a detective. People know him in Darrow.

"Hopper, then," he says, finding some kind of nostalgic fondness for calling people by their last name. "It's good to meet you." He waves at the church a little belatedly. "Don't worry," he adds, guessing, at Hopper's reticence, "I doubt there's anyone I'd know to tell, but nothing that happens in there leaves here, including who's at a meeting, unwillingly. People come and go; some are here every week, some when they need to, some once. It's not spread around."

It's been better, that way, not being purely anonymous. He's made good friends that way.

Something's been nagging at him since he first saw the man and he realizes what it is: it comes to his lips without thinking too hard. "You, have a -- girl you take care of, don't you? My...well, a friend, I suppose, from back home, Eponine: I've seen them together."

[OOC: This is SO late! No hard feelings if you don't tag back, I promise!]

"Yeah," he answers, only a little surprised. "Beverly. I know Eponine."

Maybe he doesn't know her incredible well, given that she's a kid herself, but she's a friend of Beverly's, so she comes around often enough. There are times when Hopper almost wants to ask her if she's okay, too, or if she needs somewhere safe like the apartment. He never knows how well shit like that will go over.

It's just that he worries. About all of them.

"Beverly," he says, with a remembering sort of nod; he's heard the name, just not enough. "That's right. It's a good thing, you two having each other." He won't say that kids keep you accountable -- Christ knows he was a wreck when he had Gavroche under his care -- but for him, at least, having people who need him has helped more than hurt. People to love and want to be there for. Grey Gardens has been good that way, too, Greta's sympathetic scolding after Neil left them sorely needed.

"I really ought to look in on 'Ponine more often. I used to take care of her younger brother, when he was here. Gavroche. They missed each other coming and going, like ships in the night. Neither of them ever got to really be children, you know? And she's properly old enough to be on her own. I don't know if she'd appreciate me pestering." He huffs a laugh and takes a drag on his cigarette. "I'm glad she has other people who keep track of her here and there, though."

"She doesn't strike me as the sort to like being looked in on," Hopper answers with a bit of a grin. He doesn't know her well, that's true, but there was something in the wary way she behaved around him at first that led him to believe she didn't particularly trust men.

There's probably good reason for that. He's been a cop for way too long in too many different cities to think otherwise.

"Probably better you than me," he admits. "You look like like an imposing dad type. No offense."

Steve really wants to help Hopper, because the man has become something like family to him, but he doesn’t really know how. His dad drank too much sometimes, and sometimes he would smack Steve around when he was younger. He’s not traumatized by it or anything, and he doesn’t think that Hopper would ever get to that point, but it still makes him wary.

If he were to compare Hopper to either of his parents, it would probably be his mother. She drank like she needed to be fuzzy and numb all the time. She drank like there were things she wanted to forget.

Hopper has plenty of things he’d probably like to forget.

Steve doesn’t understand addiction, not really. He drinks and smokes but he never really feels like he has to (okay, aside from his post-shift cigarette). What Steve does understand is wanting to become a better person than you were before, so he’s all for this journey that Hopper is on.

He just wishes he knew how to help. Hopper probably doesn’t want his help, and probably especially wouldn’t want him walking casually back and forth in front of the church housing his AA meetings, but that’s what he’s doing.

“Oh, hey,” Steve says when he makes another loop and finds Hopper standing out front and smoking a cigarette. He even holds up the reusable grocery bag he’s been carrying around as a prop. “Did you have a meeting today?”

Very causal.

"Oh, hey," Hopper answers in the exact same tone, although his expression is flat. "How many laps did you do before I finally came out and you could pretend this was a chance meeting?"

It's ridiculous, someone half his age looking after him like this, but Hopper hasn't asked him to stop. And he won't. Steve might be just a kid as far as Hopper is concerned, but he's a kid who more than held his own back in Hawkins and he's a kid who actually gives a shit. Maybe it feels nice, having someone here to look out for him. Diane had been wrapped up in her own grief when he'd started to go off the rails and this thing he thought they'd do together had been something they each ended up doing on their own.

So maybe he doesn't really want Steve to stop being ridiculous. Maybe he actually kind of likes it, which is evident in the fond roll of his eyes before he takes another drag and then passes his cigarette to Steve.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Steve says, lying directly to his face, which Hopper is well aware of. He doesn't seem upset or anything, so Steve walks up to him and plucks the cigarette from his hand to take a drag and hand it back.

"This is just a nice place for a stroll." He lets the grocery bag dangle from his fingers as he looks around, smiling at a woman who looks around a bit nervously as she leaves the church. She gives Steve a hesitant smile in return and walks off, leaving Steve to turn his attention back to Hopper. "Want to buy me lunch?"

"You got a job, why aren't you treating me?" he asks, but he's obviously going to buy Steve lunch as he steps away from the church and begins to head back to the sidewalk. "Where d'you wanna go?"

There are some good places around here and now that he's attending meetings, Hopper has to wonder if that's on purpose. Are the spaces available around churches and meeting halls prime real estate because diner and cafe owners know the addicts will come pouring in after their meetings are done? Wanting to drink as much coffee as they can physically handle, just to forget about the other thing they can't drink.

"You have a better job," Steve points out, though it's clear Hopper isn't actually denying him. For all his gruff exterior, Hopper doesn't really make a habit of denying anything of the people he cares about, which Steve has somehow become one of. Well, anything within reason, of course.

"There's a good sandwich place nearby," He says, patting his stomach as they walk down the street. "They have a roast beef one with cream cheese and bacon. I'll get that one since I'm still young and my heart can take it."

"The hell does that mean?" Hopper asks, giving Steve a sideways look, knowing damn well his heart probably can't take something like that and wanting it anyway. The way he sees it, if he's giving up drinking, no one is making him give up good food.

"Early forties isn't that old," he adds as they walk. "I mean, my old man didn't make it much past sixty."

Hopper has always sort of figured he would die young. In Vietnam, he'd expected to die there. In New York, he'd figured it would come for him not longer after it came for Sara. But he's still here.

"It's a joke, old man," Steve says, huffing out a laugh before giving Hopper a more serious look. "And you better make it way past sixty."

He clears his throat and then turns away to walk ahead, gesturing around the corner. Once Hopper catches up with him, Steve glances over at him. "So, uh. Good meeting?"

Hopper shrugs, not sure what to say to that question. Maybe it was a good meeting, maybe he doesn't know what makes a meeting good or bad. He'd stuck it out at the very least, even if he hadn't said anything.

"Lot of talking," he settles on saying finally. "And a lot of shit about a higher power. I dunno if... if this is the way for me."

He'll keep trying. He's not going to just give up on the meetings because his first experience was sort of a strange one, but he's started wondering already if there are other options.

"Huh." It means a lot to Steve that Hopper is talking to him about this, and he wishes desperately that he had something insightful to say, anything at all that would be helpful. But he doesn't. He rarely ever does, but he can keep thinking on it.

He thinks about the concept of a higher power, specifically. His parents brought him to church sometimes, usually on the big holidays where everyone goes to church to keep up appearances, but they weren't a religious family, and Steve never had any interest in looking into it on his own.

"Does a higher power have to be like, God?" Steve asks curiously. "Maybe it can mean something different for you. Something more personal.”

"Maybe," Hopper says. He doesn't know a lot about all of it yet. There's a book he knows he's supposed to read and he's got his copy of it and he has every intention of really trying to do the work. He's just not sure he's cut out for all this group setting stuff. Most of the time, other people just piss him off.

"It was just the first meeting," he says, shrugging. "I'll go again. Maybe even introduce myself this time around."

But he knows he doesn't need to. They'll never force him to talk and maybe that's part of the problem with it for him.

"Good." Steve knows that it would be hard to sit in front of a group of strangers and talk about things that are so deeply personal, and he can't even imagine what that would be like. He hasn't even been through anything nearly as awful as Hopper has been through.

They reach the deli and Steve pauses as he reaches out to grab the door handle, pondering over what he wants to say for a few moments before turning to look at Hopper.

"I don't know if it means much coming from me," he begins, biting his lip and not quite meeting Hopper's eyes. "But I'm super proud of you. What you're doing takes guts, and-- I just wanted you to know."

He doesn't want to make it super awkward, so he just smiles and opens the door, gesturing for Hopper to go on in.

"Christ, you sound like my dad," Hopper says with a snort, reaching out to cuff the back of Steve's head. Not that Hopper's actual father would have ever said anything like that. His parents weren't bad, his dad had always been a good guy, had always treated his wife and his son well, but men like him, born in the early part of the century, they didn't talk about their feelings. They didn't say they were proud. It came out in other ways, but it still means Hopper doesn't know what to do with what Steve says except playfully give him shit for it.

But there's a softness to his expression. He appreciates it, even if he doesn't know how to say that either.

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