something_incredible | Recent Entries

From the time he'd made the decision about all this, Hopper has been working step by step to get his shit together enough that it just might work. He'd gotten a job, gone back to work for at least a month so there's evidence of a proper income going into his bank account, he'd cleaned up the apartment bit by bit, made it less like some shitty place where someone just crashed on the couch and more like a home. He'd bought one of those new Blu-ray players and a few movies, plus some books and board games to go with the turntable and records he already owns.

Even when Beverly had just been staying with him some of the time, Hopper had made sure to get her nice, fresh sheets and towels, things that could be just hers, and part of his plan is to get her other things to make her room feel more like a place where she can be happy. He'd picked up a small desk a week back, a chair to go with it, a lamp to put on top, then one of those laptop computers like he already has and almost never uses.

He's been planning all the steps toward getting Beverly living with him full time that he's sort of put off the one major step that's required before he gets into the legal stuff. Asking her.

It's probably dumb to be nervous, but he's nervous anyway. He texts her one Sunday, asking if she's staying the night, because she usually does on Sundays, they usually watch some stupid movie on TV, only this time he's got real movies they can choose from and he tells her so. Then he says he'll pick up fried chicken for dinner, because everyone likes fried chicken.

The rest of the day drags by. He feels like an idiot, but he just wants her to be somewhere she'll be safe and happy. Somewhere she can call a real home, even if it's only for a little while, before one or both of them disappear.

These aren't decisions Hopper has come to lightly, they're the sorts of things that have kept him up at all hours for weeks now, but in the end, he thinks he's doing the right thing sort of all across the board. It's a weird feeling, given how often he's been prone to doing the wrong thing in the past, but he's trying to be better. He's been trying since Will went missing and he realized just how messed up Hawkins really was.

But the right decisions or not, he still wants to talk to Lucy about them. He's not looking for approval, but she's easily the smartest person in Darrow he knows. Maybe she'll be biased one way or the other, knowing both him and Beverly, but he's still pretty sure he can count on her for an honest reaction, which is something he desperately needs. It used to be that Diane was his sounding board and in the years after their divorce, he'd floundered. Lost his way. He's a man who does better when he's able to talk something out.

So he'd called Lucy up, asked her to come over for dinner.

Then he'd realized he'd have to make dinner and after trying to work out what the hell he was capable of cooking besides spaghetti, which had a tendency to be messy and might not be the best thing to eat with the woman he's still trying to impress, he'd called out for Thai food. He hasn't had Thai food since he'd lived in New York and even the very idea of it brings back good memories. Hawkins had been a shit town with almost nothing to offer and the longer he spends in Darrow, the more he realizes he'd missed being in a bigger city.

He'd still rather be there, be with Eleven, but as far as places go, this one's turning out not to be so bad.

At least once a week, Hopper makes an effort to check up on Steve. Sometimes it's just a text, mostly to make sure he's still around and still alive, but he tries to head over to his apartment every so often, too. Because a text is one thing and he's glad he'd figured out how to use his phone to make that happen, but it's easy to lie through a text.

Hopper's seen Steve Harrington black and blue more than a few times. If he wants to make sure that shit isn't happening here, he has to go see it for himself.

And it's not like it's a real hardship. Steve's the only other person here from Hawkins, the only other person here who really knows about the shit that went down back there. He's the only person who really knows what Eleven can do. Whatever it else that means, there's a connection there and Hopper owes it to the both of them -- plus Steve's parents -- to make sure he gets through this whole weird city without much trouble.

So he heads over. It's a week night, he figures that's the best way to do it, because Steve's less likely to have some social thing to go to. Hopper doesn't have much of those himself, he either hangs out with Beverly or somehow convinces Lucy to go on another date with him or drinks alone in the apartment he's been given. Nothing quite so sad tonight, not when he shows up at Steve's building and presses the buzzer for his apartment.

"C'mon, kid," he mutters. "Don't tell me you're this popular."

Jim Hopper is not an easy man to rattle.

He's seen shit. He was in Vietnam, he'd been a cop in New York, he lost his daughter, his family, he'd fought a damn monster and an evil lab while trying to save a bunch of kids, and that's all before being flung into this weird city he can't leave and where technology and time have both jumped forward thirty years. All of that, he thinks, is the sort of stuff that prepares a person to deal well with more weird stuff when it's flung their way.

But somehow he wasn't prepared for this.

He's sitting on the front stoop of the Bramford Building and he thinks he has plans to meet someone, but he feels like he's a million miles away. When getting his mail out of the box not ten minutes earlier, he'd shuffled through it all, most of it fliers for useless nonsense he's never going to buy and one envelope addressed to Former Resident. He was puzzling over that when he'd realized the next envelope was addressed directly to him.

It's official looking. Like it's come from the government. Or maybe some kind of lab.

He tears into it hurriedly and when the doctored birth certificate slips out, Hopper stares at the names for a long moment before he finds himself sinking down to the stairs. This was the plan all along. This was what he was going to ask Owens to provide him if he and Eleven made it out of that pit alive. A birth certificate that made him Eleven's father, something that couldn't be challenged, something no one would ever question. A way to give her a real life. A real family.

There's her name. Jane Hopper. His last name, his full name listed as her father. Theresa Ives listed as her mother.

He doesn't know what to think. His hand is shaking a little and Hopper pulls the birth certificate close, holding it against his chest with his eyes closed.

The morning after his bender, Hopper had woken up on Lucy's couch pretty damn embarrassed, some of his memories blurred to the point where he might consider it a black out, but he remembered two specific things very clearly. Lucy had been a hell of a lot kinder to him than he deserved, and he had decided, in his stoned and drunken state, that asking her on a second date at that moment had been appropriate.

But for some reason she had agreed to go with him.

Since then, it's been a lot easier to keep himself from drinking. That's down to Beverly, though, and he knows maybe it's not real recovery if he's not drinking because of a kid he's sort of looking after, but it's better than nothing. Those pills he'd bought, he'd held onto them for a few days, but after the first night Beverly had needed to spend at his place he'd flushed them down the toilet.

What he wants is to get back home. But maybe Darrow has a few things going for it, too, and somehow he's got a kid who trusts him enough to come to him when things get weird at the Home and a woman who actually wants to see him again after she finds him in a pretty goddamn terrible state and he thinks he should probably try not to mess any of this up.

So they're going bowling. It's a little cheesy, but Hopper likes cheesy and he likes Lucy, and when he shows up at her place to pick her up, he's bound and determined to do this properly. He's come up short of getting flowers, figuring a woman like Lucy would probably appreciate something a little more thoughtful than that, so he's going to leave gifts for a little later in whatever this might turn into.

But he does go up to her apartment to pick her up instead of waiting around outside and when he knocks on her door, he finds he's both excited and nervous.

It's been a long few weeks and there's no end in sight, as far as Hopper can tell. Just like everyone has said, he's stuck here, stuck in this damn city where he doesn't recognize anyone or anything, and there's no way for him to get out. He's tried, just like he's sure nearly everyone else has tried, and he keeps ending up back in the same place where he started.

It's like some kind of purgatory, he's pretty sure of that, only he doesn't think he's dead.

Besides, his apartment building is haunted with a real ghost and he's pretty sure something like purgatory wouldn't have hauntings like that. But, hell, maybe he's wrong about that. Maybe he's wrong about all of it.

A part of him wants to stay holed up in his apartment and just never leave, but he knows what will happen if he does that. The beer will start and eventually that will lead back to the pills and while Hopper had never really seen a problem with what he'd been doing, he knows there are plenty of other people who would argue with him over that. He doesn't want to deal with it again, not here. Back in Hawkins he had mostly been left alone, but here it seems like people are always wanting check in and see how he's doing.

It would be annoying if he didn't find himself sort of enjoying it.

Darrow isn't as small as Hawkins, but it's small enough that he's run into some familiar faces now and then. When he spots Nicaise outside what looks like some sort of dance studio, Hopper is prepared to head over there with some comment about how it's good to see royalty again, but as he walks in that direction, he realizes what's happening. There are other boys with Nicaise, bigger kids, ones who are giving him a hard time about having come out of the studio apparently.

It reminds him a little of what Joyce said about Will, about the way Lonnie had been with him, and Hopper feels a red hot surge of anger.

"Hey!" he shouts, although he's close enough he doesn't need to raise his voice. When he yells, though, kids cower. It's not something he's proud of, but he knows it's the truth, and even bullies like this don't like hearing a voice like his. Probably because it sounds a lot like their shitty parents, he reflects, but Hopper isn't the nicest guy and he's going to use it if he can. "What the hell are you doing?"

Apparently in 2018, it's impossible to find anywhere that allows you to smoke inside. He could quit, like half the people he meets these days suggests he do, but Hopper doesn't really like the idea of giving up the one thing that's still familiar to him in this weird city.

He's not even a cop anymore. He could be. At least, he's pretty sure he could be, but this place seems to fall somewhere between New York and Hawkins when it comes to the level of crime he'd be facing and Hopper honestly isn't sure if he's ready to take a step back in New York's direction. Hawkins had been weird in recent years, yeah, but somehow facing down a bunch of monsters with heads full of teeth where their faces should be just doesn't seem as daunting as returning to cases of assault and murder and rape and abuse.

Shit like that's exhausting. New York had just about wrung every last little bit of good out of him and he can think of a lot better things to do with his time than going back to being a cop.

Like smoking. And drinking. And maybe taking a few pills to ease the pain. He hasn't, not yet, but he thinks about it every day. The only thing that keeps him from going back there right now is the thought that Eleven might show up here someday and he'd hate for her to see him like that, his eyes glazed over, just this side of high on whatever pain pills he was able to find. It had been fucked up before, but at least before there hadn't been a kid to worry about. The fact that there hadn't been was what took him to the pills in the first place, but now there is again. There's Eleven.

Maybe some other kids, too.

So right now he's huddled outside a bar, the collar of his Hawkins PD coat turned up against the cold wind, smoking the last cigarette in the pack he'd bought the day before. He's going through them too fast, but there's not much else here to distract him.

Another beer maybe. It's probably too early to get drunk, but just one more won't kill him. He takes one last drag from his cigarette before crushing it against the heel of his boot, then turns back toward the bar and nearly walks straight into someone.

"Shit, sorry," he says, lifting his hand to her shoulder to steady her.

Ten days. He's been in this city for ten days and no route he's tried to take out of here has gotten him anywhere.

Anyone who's been here longer than a week had told him as much, but he figures he can't be blamed for not just blindly accepting there's no going home and at least giving it a shot. Nothing he does gets him anywhere, though, nowhere but here. It's strange, but he can deal with strange, somehow strange has become familiar in the past year and a half. It's not the strange that bothers him. It's not even that his apartment building is haunted that bothers him. (He's seen her only once, but he'd seen her. Clear as day.)

It's being without the rest of them.

Having Steve here is a comfort. It's another bit of familiarity, but the face he really wants to see is Eleven's. Or Joyce. At this point, he'd even be happy to hear Dustin talking about dragons or letting Mike punch him a few more times for having kept Eleven away from him. Anything if it meant a bit of home. The only piece of home he has now is the blue hairband around his wrist and even that isn't the home he'd left in Hawkins.

It's the middle of Tuesday, almost February now, and he's out in the bright, clear sun. The apartment is too empty, he doesn't know what to do with it or with himself when he's inside, so he goes out and he walks. Too many times already he's stumbled back to the apartment drunk, but he still looks at the clock on his phone -- that's about the only thing he uses it for -- and tries to decide if it's too early for a drink. Just after one. Too early.

So instead of a bar, he heads for one of the streets lined with shops and small cafes. Maybe if he gets himself a coffee he can convince himself to stay sober for just a little while longer.

Turning toward one of the coffee shops he actually likes, one that feels comfortable and simple instead of something daunting where he has too many options for something as easy as coffee, he spots a familiar head of red hair. Lengthening his strides, he catches up to Bev in just a few moments and he asks, keeping his voice casual, "Aren't you supposed to be in school right about now?"