skepticgirl_1 | don't get comfortable don't be sensible

I have a sick feeling in my stomach. Like ate bad Chinese food sick to my stomach. Because Ben Beckman of all people has me cornered in an alleyway behind the malt shop.

"You gotta show me something."

"I told you I would pay," I insisted. I knew this argument would not go anywhere with Ben though. This was his m.o.: offer up a fake I.D. to a hot girl, volunteer a deep discount and then expect the exchange to be made along with a hook up. But I had underestimated him. Or myself? I thought I wouldn't be hot enough to earn this kind of attention from him, that I would just pay money. I had also thought that, were I hot enough, I could get away with a kiss or something. Apparently I wasn't quite right either way.

"That's not how this works. And you're not hot enough to get credit. Show me your tits."

This was so not what I had in mind.

I sighed, not having to play at being uncomfortable as my hands moved down to the hem of my shirt. Then I froze.

"Do you hear something?" Ben stiffened and looked to the mouth of the alleyway. Which gave me the opportunity to knee him in the balls. He was much taller than me though, and the shot wasn't clean. He stumbled back cursing but didn't fall and I booked it as fast as I could.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Retirement," he says, then groans a little. "Well, now I just feel old."

In Hawkins he would have been at least eighteen years from retirement, long enough for him to get a pretty decent pension, long enough for him to raise another kid, really, but now he's in a city where the kids think he's already old enough to retire. Even if she had said early.

"Are there a lot of creeps teenage girls need protecting from?" he asks in return. That's not something he'll ever just walk away from, that's for sure, but whatever her answer is might help him get a better sense of what Darrow is like in terms of crime.

"There are a couple," I admitted, wrinkling my nose to the subject. Ben, of course, was something that I had partially invited, but that didn't take away from his creep factor. There were run of the mill creeps at school, too. The types that wouldn't really make any moves that couldn't be fended off. It was the ones like Ben and Tad that I (and Betty) were on the watch for.

"Ben's not that bad but... I mean, you heard about the Purge, right?"

Hopper's brow creases and he says, "No."

Whatever the hell it is, though, it doesn't sound good. Anything called the purge isn't the sort of thing that makes someone feel hopeful about the state of things.

"Doesn't sound good, though," he adds. "I got a feeling you're not about to tell me it's some cheery celebration where everyone's kind to each other."

"Oh."

I winced uncomfortably. I didn't really want to be the one to explain this to him. But I had been the one to open that can of worms, so I had to help explain them.

Did that metaphor even work? Be a better self-editor, Lane.

"So, there's apparently one night every seven years where all the laws go out the window," I said. "You're allowed to do anything. Arson, breaking and entering, theft. ...Murder. Some people take it real far and turn it into a, uh..." I swallowed hard, the memories coming up unbidden. "Hunting sport."

"What the fuck."

The words just come out, he hasn't planned for them and it's not like it's her fault he's hearing this for the first time. She didn't plan the damn thing, but it sounds like a prank. Like some shitty thing a kid would tell him to get him to bring it up around someone else and look like an asshole, only he can see it in her eyes that she's not just yanking his chain.

"And cops just don't do anything?" he asks. He wouldn't have been able to do that, just sit by while people are hurt. Hopper might not be good for much, but he's a pretty decent cop.

I shrugged helplessly, then edited myself to add: "I mean, some of them tried. Like Jake. He went out to try and protect people. But it was the whole city and the whole point was that everything illegal was legal. They didn't have any power."

I started to mutter something else under my breath, then asked myself why I was bothering. Clearly Hopper disliked this as much as I did, but everyone native was so deadset on this being a good thing that I found myself watching my volume sometimes.

"Some of them definitely were in on it."

That doesn't surprise Hopper, as much as he wishes he could say it did, and his mouth twists into a frown. He'd worked in New York, he'd seen more than a few dirty cops during his time there and it's not like he himself is always a shining example of perfection, but he knows he never took a damn bribe and he knows he wouldn't just sit by while people get hurt during an event like the one Lois is describing.

"Yeah, some cops are shits," he agrees, still frowning. "But who the hell comes up with an idea like that in the first place? It'd have to be passed by government officials to get that kind of play in a city this size."

I wasn't at all surprised -- or particularly pleased -- that Hopper clearly found the whole thing disgusting. That was the proper reaction that someone should have to this kind of thing. It just assured me that he was a standard level good human being. Which was good.

"Exactly," I said, nodding. "It's like, a tradition. It dates back centuries. Which is weird in and of itself." For other reasons that I wasn't about to explain to him right now. The city was weird enough without taking into account the fact that it didn't really exist that many years ago.

"But, yeah, ask any Darrow native and they think it's completely normal. And good."

"Shit," Hopper says again. He's seen a lot of really weird shit in Hawkins, things he never would have imagined as accepting as being normal, but at least no one had been in the streets killing each other and getting away with it because some government official said it was okay to do that every seven years.

"I'm not sure if that makes me want to go back to being a cop more or less," he admits. Maybe he can help in the day to day, but if something like that comes around again and he's helpless to really do anything, he knows that's something he won't deal with very well.

"It's only every seven years," I said reassuringly. And then I realized that, when I said it, it was with the assumption that neither of us would be here in seven years. It would be someone else's problem, not ours. We would be gone.

Wouldn't we? Did people stay in Darrow for that many years?

"There's a lot of good stuff you can do in the meanwhile."

"Yeah," he agrees. "It's just trying to work out who the good cops are and who the bad ones are is a hell of a thing."

And he doesn't want to sound like a complete asshole, but he's tired. Maybe that'll change with a little bit of time, but right now, he barely gets through his days. He wants to drink, he wants to sit alone in the dark apartment he's been given and not think about anything, about everything he's missing. It would be good for him to go back to work, but he's just so damn tired of dealing with conspiracies and shitty people who can't get their morals together, who do bad things to good kids without even a thought. He's not sure he has the energy to do all that again.

"Maybe for the time being I just wander around the city and see who I find trying to give people a hard time in alleys," he says with a small smile.

I could hear how much he didn't want to go sorting through who was good and who was bad. I could probably insist that Jake was one of the good ones until I was blue in the face, but how much did that matter when you had to question everyone else you were working with? It had been tiring enough when I had thought The Third was against me, and that had been the opposite situation: all good people, one bad egg.

I didn't blame him for not being enthusiastic about his career choices right now.

I grinned at him. "Hey, I mean, I have no problem with that, on a personal, selfish level," I said. "Though I'm trying to do better about not making a habit of getting into trouble."

don't get comfortable don't be sensible

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject