Who: Hopper and Claire What: Hopper's arrival When: Day 1, morning Where: Starts in the lounge, ends in the library-ish Warnings: Mild language Status: Complete
Jim had come to accept that there were things in his life that were real that he never would have believed before, and he just had to accept it. Government conspiracies that were real, children with superpowers, other dimensions with monsters that apparently weren’t as easy to contain as they originally thought. As he was originally promised.
But he hadn’t expected to end up in the Upside Down- again. He probably should have expected it. He’d been following the root system, and in the back of his mind, he knew how fragile the wall between his world and the Upside Down was thin, but he didn’t think it would be this thin.
It wasn’t until he’d come to the first fork in the tunnels that he realized he was walking over bones. Human bones. After the second fork, the fog set in, sudden and dense enough that he couldn’t see a few feet in front of him. His flashlight was useless against the fog, but he kept it out anyway, raised alongside his gun.
It didn’t really sink in when the fog dissipated, or when he walked through the front doors of a hotel. Nothing stopped him from walking up to the front desk and signing his name. As soon as he set the pen down again, everything came back into focus- and this, he was having a hard time believing.
A hotel. Obviously a hotel. Big, old fashioned, with nobody behind the desk, but his name written in the guest book- and decorated like a haunted mansion. His first thought was that it was a trick from the Upside Down, but he hadn’t seen it do anything like this. His next thought, which felt crazy, was that he’d ended up in another world through the tunnels in the Upside Down. Maybe it wasn’t so crazy.
He kept his flashlight out rather than trust the lights not to just flicker their way off, and kept his gun drawn, but at his side. It was just Halloween. Maybe this was the Upside Down’s way of fucking with Halloween… Deciding to stay on the first floor, he turned and started down a short hallway that lead him into a lounge. There were cobwebs in the corners, floating candelabras, a piano playing itself, paintings on the walls with eyes that moved- everything typical of a haunted house.
Except the bar. There was a fully stocked bar, along with a few different beer taps, and when he tested one, cold beer poured out of it. Cold, decent beer. He only poured himself half a glass, and he sipped it slowly, squinting around the empty room.
“Pour me another whiskey, barkeep.”
The voice alone was enough to make Jim drop his glass, but the accompanying translucent figure that sat behind the bar had him pulling his gun. After a couple of seconds, he realized two things- the guy behind the bar was looking straight past his gun, and he could see through him. Or it. And the foggy glass it set down on the bar.
“What the hell is goin’ on here,” he muttered, lowering his gun slowly and reaching for the bottle of whiskey. By the time he had it open to pour a glass, the ghost had disappeared. Jim stared at the space where he’d been for another second before taking a short, decisive swig from the bottle of whiskey and grimacing as he set it down again. He wanted to believe he was dreaming, but the burn he felt in his throat said otherwise. Fuck.
Having been one of the hotel’s longest-held playthings (besides poor Gretel), Claire had woken up to much ruder surprises than what had to be the Disney-est version of ‘spooky’ she’d seen outside her grandmother’s TV during October. The creep-factor of the dim lighting and disembodied candlesticks was considerably downplayed compared to at least five different weeks she could pull off the top of her head- let alone what she dealt with before getting sucked into this place. Hell, the weirdest part about the young hunter’s morning wasn’t the holographic ghost-maid shouting British insults at her for leaving her clothes on the floor, or the eyeballs that blinked at her from the darkness of her wardrobe, but was the fact that she’d apparently ended up in a different room- without Cas- on the eighth goddamn floor.
Trotting down all those stairs was annoying, and so was the idea of having to go back up eventually (because fuck that elevator), but Claire had a routine now that included finding the coffee maker and getting herself a cup before getting the overall damage report. She needed to check in with the Winchesters, with Cas, then see if Quentin was still around- but nothing before coffee. Routine helped her keep her head. She refused to go insane in this place.
Tying her hair in a ponytail on her way through the lobby and into the lounge, intent for the kitchen, with the extra aesthetic everywhere she almost missed the movement in the corner of her eye that was actually real- the big dab of beige in the otherwise ‘spooky’ lighting standing behind the bar. From where she was, almost twenty feet away and moving, her first glance thought it might be that Texas or Georgia-born Marshall rooming with Dean, but she actually stopped to look.
This guy had at least seventy pounds on Rayland, and was completely unfamiliar.
“Hey, Newbie-” she called out without much of a second thought. At least he wasn’t destroying things like Logan. Or Negan. “You just show up?”
The voice startled Jim out of his half-trance where he was still staring at the spot where a ghost had disappeared- because that was normal. His knee-jerk reaction was to raise his weapon, aiming at wherever the voice came from until he centered on someone across the room. It didn’t really register that he’d gone from finishing off his half glass of beer to drawing his weapon, and that he’d dropped the glass on the floor rather than the bar.
“Who the hell are you?” he called back, not exactly hostile, but loud and guarded.
It took a few more seconds for him to realize he was aiming his gun at a kid. Basically a kid. Young enough to be a kid. His aim faltered, his gun dropping a few inches while he frowned through the dark decor and blinked through the haze panic always set off in his head and his chest. He didn’t know if this was better or worse than the Upside Down.
Claire didn’t have her piece on her when she showed up here God-Knows how long ago, and she hadn’t thought to clean or pack the one she saved from the freakin’ zombie world this morning- so naturally her reaction to being pulled on (by a cop, no less) was an immediate duck behind a nearby booth, and a short spray of profanity.
“-the fuck, dude-!” she barked out, keeping her head down for now, though no shots rang out. Maybe she should’ve been more careful about greeting the newcomers- maybe she was just getting too used to it all.
She wasn’t thinking about either possibility at the moment.
“Look- I dunno where you came from, but even here pullin’ on someone for sayin’ hello is rude as hell,” she added, taking a chance to peek over the edge of the booth. She noticed the look of confusion- well duh- but still. “Long as you got that gun up, this conversation ain’t gonna be pleas…”
Mid-sentence, something struck Claire so hard in the head, for an instant she thought he’d actually shot her- until it spread through her mind like tear gas, swallowing every thought, panicked or otherwise; in two seconds, her eyes rolled back- and she hit the floor.
Jim had been halfway to holstering his gun again, but the second he realized something was wrong, he locked it in, shoved down the immediate distrust he felt just because she was a stranger, and rounded the bar. He didn’t get to her before her head hit the floor, but he kept her head supported when she started seizing and tried to remember the various first aid he’d learned. Something about turning people on their side, maybe? And something about keeping them from biting their tongue, but he didn’t know how.
Staring down at her, the question of whether or not it was actually possible to scare someone to death crossed his mind. It seemed like a haunted house was the sort of place that sort of thing might happen, but fuck.
“C’mon, kid,” he muttered. “Snap out of it, come on.”
It didn’t last more than a few seconds- five at most, for the worst part of the whole thing to pass, leaving her limp and out on the lounge’s thin, retro carpet- but for Claire, it felt like a year- literally.
A year (or more) of memories flash-burned into her brain in the span of a few hard heartbeats. Once the smoke started to clear and all her figurative lights started switching on, her mind started filing away the new images in their right order through the reboot. The problem was, when Claire opened her eyes, they were still fairly jumbled with the most recent.
The explosive mix of panic and the worst confusion she’d ever known in her life immediately made her eyes lock on the face above her, frayed and sharp as her gasp- and the tip of a sword suddenly making it’s presence very obvious against his ribs. That didn’t last too long, either- just enough to back him up while she scrambled frantically to her feet.
“Wha-- who...” Claire grasped at words and thoughts, one hand holding the sword with the other planted hard against her temple, fighting what felt like a hangover from Hell, localized all in her skull. “-fucking werewolves!”
He probably should have been expecting it. He didn’t expect the seizure, and he didn’t expect her to recover so quickly, but after pulling a gun on her, the sword shouldn’t have been so surprising. Maybe he would’ve been less surprised by a gun. It did its job- he backed up, his hands raised and free of weapons while he backed out of her reach.
At least she seemed to be okay. Mostly. Although he knew well enough that being back on your feet didn’t necessarily mean you were okay. Slowly, he got back up from the floor, watching her cautiously- and watching her sword even more cautiously.
“I-... werewolves?” Jim had pulled himself together enough to realize his gun was not the right answer to this situation, but he still wasn’t entirely sure what this situation was. “You okay, kid?”
Claire wasn’t nearly as focused as she should’ve been; even standing felt like a complicated task with the way her thoughts were racing, flashing like a projector on turbo, with all the slides completely out of order. She had enough wherewithal to recognize the dude wasn’t a threat- at least, not the immediate threat- the tip of the sword lowered like it was too heavy as she shuffled the few steps toward the booth seat and plopped down onto it. At first, she didn’t see the transparent, top-hatted party goer that materialized right next to her, stretching one arm across her shoulders in the classic ‘yawn and stretch’ move.
“-get the hell off me-!” She shrugged away the spectre with an emphatic recoil- when he chuckled, she ran her sword through his face, and right into the booth cushion- only then did the thing disappear in a swirl of mist. She left the sword there- maybe as a warning. Who the hell knew.
“I’m… holy shit- gimme a sec.” Things were starting to clear as she finally answered the new guy- him coming back into focus as real and now, as opposed to half the shit in her head, which was throbbing still. This had to be what happened to Negan that one time… and Eliot. And a few others. Getting slammed with a bunch of new memories hurt like a bitch. “Just don’t shoot me.”
Jim couldn’t do much more than stand and watch her for a minute, still wary even though he’d holstered his gun. Just because he didn’t need it, didn’t mean she wasn’t dangerous- but the more he watched her, the more it became clear that she was confused and disoriented. And when he took the time to really think about it, he remembered the first thing he’d heard her say. ‘Hey, Newbie,’ couldn’t really be considered hostile. For her sake, he didn’t make any comments about the apparent ghost trying to cop a feel. Not right now, anyway.
“I’m not gonna shoot you,” he promised, his tone firm and his palms still open in surrender. He could tell she was young enough to be called kid, but old enough that she wasn’t really a kid anymore, and decided maybe they could both use a beer. Beer seemed okay to have after a seizure. “It’s… been a long, shitty day. Want a beer?” He was already on his way to the bar to get one for himself.
She’d been on her way to the kitchen for coffee, but that intention had disappeared somewhere in the chaos in her head- all of it still settling, and not all that smoothly. A beer did sound pretty good. All things considering.
“Uh- yeah,” she managed to get out, along with a nod that just stirred up the spinning in her head. She pinched the bridge of her nose for a second, then sighed, dropping back against the cushion with a sigh and closed her eyes. That helped a bit. “Much better option…”
While Hopper filled one glass, he dug into his pocket to find his thankfully intact, still-full pack of cigarettes, and his lighter in his other pocket so he could light one and try to act like anything was normal. The ghost who sat in front of the bar was back, and demanded another drink again. This time, he didn’t even bother going to pour him a glass.
When they were both filled, he came back to the table with their glasses and sat across from her. Beer generally made him able to tolerate things a little more, but he wasn’t sure how much it would help in his current situation.
“How’s your head?” he asked around his cigarette, taking his hat off and setting it on the table.
How was her head? Still weird- that was the best description Claire had at the moment, and it was probably clear as a fucking bell on her face- but at least her thoughts were somewhat coherent.
“This is not how I expected my morning to go- and that is really sayin’ something,” she told him after a long pause. She’d been trying to figure out where to start- not an easy task on a ‘normal’ day in the hotel. Claire went right for the beer when he set it in front of her and took the first three swallows down somewhat carefully, as if she might have temporarily forgotten how to swallow.
Thankfully, drinking came naturally to her.
“You might wanna start drinkin’ now. Once it stops feeling like someone ran over my brain with a truck, what I have to tell you’s gonna make you feel the same.”
Hopper exhaled a lungful of smoke and reached for his beer, figuring he didn’t have much else to do besides drink beer and pretend this wasn’t fraying every single already-frayed nerve of his even further. It didn’t help that there was a new ghost every time he looked around the room. This time, it was a couple dancing to music coming from the piano, and he stared for a few seconds before he had to look away and drink more of his beer.
“I’ve seen some pretty strange shit in the past few years,” he muttered, taking another drag from his cigarette. “Don’t really know how much worse it can get.”
The high-browed look Claire gave- not necessarily to him, more toward the table than anything- said two things about how she felt about that; she wasn’t even remotely surprised that this guy had seen ‘strange shit’- the hotel tended to collect people like that- and as for how much worse it could get?
She sighed, rolling her lips of morning-beer, and flicked her eyes up to his face like he was about to get some bad news.
“Okay- I’m about to hit you with a lot of information at once, so try to keep up, and save your questions for after, mkay?” It was just so much easier to rip the bandaid off, especially when her head still felt like pudding, and she still had to deal with all the new shit in her memory. She didn’t wait for him to answer.
“This hotel is in what some people have been callin’ a ‘pocket dimension’. It pulls people in from different times, places, other dimensions, even like- comic books and shit like that. Every seven days, that big-ass clock in the lobby chimes and we end up in another weird create-your-own-adventure story. Sometimes the hotel changes us, too- there’s no rhyme or reason for any of it.”
Hopper tried to relax back in his seat, alternating between pulls from his cigarette and sips of beer while she spoke. It wasn’t what he’d been expecting, and frankly, it sounded like something his group of misfit kids would come up with, but so far, most of the shit they came up with had sort of ended up being true. Kind of. It still might have been a trick from the Upside Down. He wouldn’t rule it out completely.
“Okay…” He flicked some ash from his cigarette into the dusty ash tray sitting on the table, taking in a deep breath and letting it out slowly. “What do you mean the hotel changes us?” He looked at her with the same frown he’d been wearing pretty much the whole time, and drank some more of his beer. They’d both need some more soon if they kept it up.
“Pretty much exactly that,” she replied, pausing only to take down another thick swallow of her own. She set it back down on the table, then gave the lounge yet another quick surveying look, at the same time yanking her sword back out of the cushion where she’d skewered a ghost. Every five minutes or so, she did the same thing again- always watching her back.
“One time it turned half of us into werewolves- a bunch ended up as vampires. Some people switched powers, or the in-humans became human for a while.” That was another piece of information she sort of gleaned over- there were people here that had powers. There were people here that weren’t people. Claire’s eyes were on the cop again, vaguely trying to gage how he was taking it all; his frown was expected, and hadn’t changed much, but he had a hard sort of look that was difficult to read. She wondered how strange his ‘strange shit’ really was.
“One time we ended up in the middle of the zombie apocalypse. One time we went to Disney World.” The flat tone in her voice was similar to sarcasm, but distinctly not.
Werewolves. Vampires. In-humans. Zombie apocalypse. The only part of it that didn’t surprise him that much was the in-humans part; that was something he was used to. Sort of. He was used to El, but she was the only in-human he’d met. It didn’t surprise him that much that there would be others out there, but he thought they were all made by the government.
Except the hotel evidently had people from comic books. He didn’t know that much about comic books, aside from the more popular superheroes, and even then, he didn’t really keep up with any of them. Being around that kind of stuff was one thing- being made into it was another.
“Disney World,” he muttered with a scoff, shaking his head and rubbing a hand over his face. “Okay, so... “ Where the hell should be even start? She’d done a pretty decent job of filling him in so far, and he wasn’t sure how much having his questions answered would help, anyway. “How many people are here?”
Claire’s lips tugged into her cheeks in an expression somewhere between a shrug and a grimace. She sighed in her words.
“Changes all the time… When I showed up, there was only like, three of us. Now, I dunno- maybe twenty? It’s hard as shit to keep track. Sometimes people just disappear. -sometimes they come back later, not rememberin’ any of the crap they went through last time. Time doesn’t really work right, here. Neither does Death…” For that last point, she needed another heavy drink- her glass was almost finished. “Every new week, you wake up the same as you were when you showed up- wearin’ the same clothes, everything. Nobody ages. And if you die here… you wake up again at the start of the next week- unless you die outside.”
“Uh-huh…” Hopper stared at his cigarette where he held it poised over the ashtray, trying to decide what to do with all of the information. The anxiety still lingered, and he had to keep from smoking this cigarette too fast because he definitely didn’t have enough to be burning through them like that. Literally. “Guess I’ll try not to die outside, then.”
He finished off his glass of beer, watching the beads of condensation roll down the glass for a few seconds while he let things start to process. His first guess had been that he’d ended up in another dimension or something, so he hadn’t really been wrong, but having his suspicions confirmed filled him with more dread than relief. Part of him was still hoping he was imagining it, but he couldn’t come up with this.
“What’s your name?” he asked, deciding to steer the conversation elsewhere, at least temporarily.
She answered after finishing off her beer, but distractedly; her eyes had been caught by the top-hatted ghost trying to re-materialize next to her.
“Claire- y’know, I’m feelin’ a lot better-” she said, though nothing in her tone suggested she actually was, save for less shakiness in her legs. She was already starting to get up- much to the chagrin of the spectre trying to arm-reach the air she left behind. “C’mon- I’ll show you around.”
Hopper ashed his cigarette, put his hat back on, and slid out of the booth after her, following her lead since he saw the ghost already showing up again at her side. It could have been worse than a haunted hotel, but if it changed every week, he wondered what other changes they’d seen besides Disney World and zombie apocalypses.
“I’m Jim,” he said, following her through to the kitchen. There were paintings on the walls with eyes that followed them, and even though they were wandering away from the piano, there was still music coming from somewhere. “People usually call me Hopper.” He didn’t see much point in identifying himself as chief; the badge on his chest said it, and it wouldn’t make much of a difference in a haunted hotel.
Unsurprisingly, there was another ghost in the kitchen; this one was a chef, who looked up as soon as they crossed the thresold and muttered something he couldn’t quite make out. When Claire went to go start some water for coffee, the chef threw the tops of a carrot at her, though they disappeared in a cloud of smoke as soon as they hit her face.
“How long have you been here?” he asked.
Happy as Claire was that these ghosts weren’t trying to shove her off the balcony or skewer her with sharp things, this shit was going to get old real fast- and her face showed it. So did the unnecessary force in which she loaded the coffee pot, filter, and grounds.
“Like I said, it’s hard to keep track-” she started, turning her back to the counter once the coffee started to brew. She also ‘called’ the angel sword back into its own ‘pocket universe’ up her sleeve, so she could more comfortably cross her arms. “A year, maybe? I don’t know. There’s only two others that’ve been here longer than me- Negan, and only by a few days… fair warning; he’s an acquired taste. He comes from the zombie apocalypse. And Gretel- she’s been here for years.”
Hopper watched her sword disappear with raised eyebrows, and decided he needed a second cigarette, after all. Plus, the fact that being here didn’t necessarily seem to be a permanent thing was… sort of unsettling. More than unsettling. He needed to get back home- he needed to get back to El. He took a long pull and leaned back against the counter opposite Claire, sort of wishing he’d gotten more beer.
“Interesting, uh… weapon,” he commented, flicking ash onto the already-dusty floor. It earned him half a potato being thrown in his direction, but he ducked out of the way, and it disappeared as soon as it hit the wall. “So… I probably know the answer to this already, but I have to ask- does anyone know how to leave here? On purpose?”
Claire gave him a noncommittal look for the comment about her ‘weapon’- one that conveyed her thoughts with a surprising amount of clarity: stick to one long story at a time. It was for his own good.
And probably her’s, too.
“Only way I know is stories Gretel has,” she started, sparing a moment to glare at the cook, brandishing her spectral carving knife at her just for the look. Claire briefly rolled her eyes before moving on. “-people who just can’t take it anymore walk off into the fog, or the woods, or whatever world is outside the hotel doors at the time, and stay there after the clock chimes. Where they go, nobody knows. Just not back here.”
“So what strange shit did you come from, anyway?” Claire decided she should probably ask the guy some of her own questions, now that her head was mostly clear. She’d talk to Dean about the werewolf hunt later, once she stopped feeling like the damned memory happened yesterday, along with everything else here at the hotel. “You really a cop? Lemme guess- some backwoods corn-fed town somewhere in the Midwest…”
That didn’t really sound like the leaving option he could go for. He didn’t know where the he hell he was now, but at least he was somewhere. It was better than wandering through fog. The fact that he didn’t know how long he’d be stuck there was the part that bothered him the most. How long would El be waiting for him? She would wander off if he didn’t come back…
“Yes, I’m really a cop,” he sighed, adjusting his hat subconsciously and taking another drag from his cigarette while he debated how much to tell her. What difference did it make? He didn’t have to get that detailed. “Chief of police in Hawkins, Indiana, so you got that part right. Some government facility off the edge of my town broke down a wall between my world and one called the Upside Down.” That was the short version, and the easier version. “And the Upside Down’s got monsters that like to steal people and then eat them.” There. Good enough summary.
One of the teenager’s eyebrows arched as she listened to the story- of course, she didn’t look surprised. Nor did she look skeptical; every word Chief Jim Hopper said was accepted as truth- because why the hell else would he be here if it wasn’t.
Finally, Claire snorted, a faint smirk on her lips.
“Sounds a lot like Purgatory,” she told him with the same dry honesty, then pushed herself off the counter in order to turn around and grab the now-full coffee pot- no mug required. In the meantime, she added- “You’ll fit in here just fine.”
Hopper watched her take the coffee pot, and it took a couple of seconds for him to realize she was taking the coffee pot. Briefly rolling his eyes, he held his cigarette between his lips and went to the cupboard to grab a mug for himself.
“Hey- give me some of that,” he said, holding his mug out. Granted, he’d probably go for more beer again before he started looking through the rest of the hotel, but coffee always helped. “What kind of world are you from?”
Claire looked like parting with some of her coffee was an annoyance she didn’t want to deal with at first, but ended up begrudgingly pouring him some. He got her a beer after that damned memory-fuck, after all. Now, she vaguely considered them even.
“I’d say ‘normal’ but that’s always a matter of perspective when goin’ over all our origin stories-” she’d used Q use that phrase once. It fit really well. Ignoring the transparent chef’s profane muttering, Claire started to lead him back out to the hallway- coffee pot in hand, occasionally brought to her lips for a careful sip.
“2016, United States-” Because that was necessary information on this subject… “Most people go about their normal lives; getting jobs, having babies, complaining on Facebook, all that… they don’t know all the supernatural shit that legends and superstitions and religions were made of are actually real. Monsters, ghosts, demons, angels, other gods… whatever. I’m a hunter- me and others like me keep the lid on the Ugly… best we can, anyway.” Veering through the hallway, she lead him into the pool, where a handful of ghosts in old-timey bathing suits were playing Keep-Away with one of their friend’s heads. “The sword belonged to an archangel that killed my mom- before I killed him with it. There’s more to it, but it listens to me now… This is the pool, by the way.”
Hopper’s eyebrows shot up after the first few words of her story- she was 30 years into his future. He subdued his look of surprise with a sip from his coffee. The rest of her story seemed a hell of a lot more believable to him now that he’d had his own experiences with monsters, although what he was used to didn’t have anything to do with religion. And it sure as hell didn’t have anything to do with angels and demons.
“I think I read a comic like that once,” he muttered, taking a drag from his cigarette and looking out over the pool. He didn’t know hotels had pools that big, but then again, this wasn’t a normal hotel. “In my world, it’s 1984. And it was just Halloween…” He trailed off for a second, watching a couple of female spectres evidently practicing a synchronised swimming routine (badly) in the pool. “There usually this many ghosts around?”
Nineteen eighty-four? Claire’s facial shrug wasn’t much- she’d heard a lot weirder. Ignoring the ghostly antics, she sipped from her coffee pot and headed back into the hallway- fully expecting him to follow.
“Good timing for you then,” she said dryly, adding, “But no, not usually. At least, they’re not this visible, usually. Or noisy… but there’s always crazy shit goin’ on, regardless of where- or when- we are.”
She lead him back through the lounge, saying nothing about it since this is where she’d found him anyway- there wasn’t much to tell. Booths. Beer. Liquor. Ghosts. However, as they passed the lobby and the elevator, she pointed into the brass cage, more with her coffee than a finger. She didn’t even look at it, or pause. “That’s the elevator. Don’t go near it. At the end of the hallway is a set of stairs going down- don’t go down there, either.”
Only after taking three stairs up the main case did she pause, half-turning over her shoulder. “You got your PDA, right?” A beat passed before his slightly blank look reminded her of something. “The little calculator-lookin’ thinger that showed up in your hand when you signed the book.”
Hopper followed Claire through the lounge, tempted to stop and get himself another beer, but he decided he’d get more later if he still wanted it. For now, he figured he should probably be grateful that the first person who’d stumbled upon him didn’t hold it against him that he’d pulled a gun on her, and that she was willing to show him around. He gave the elevator a dubious look, and debated whether or not it was worth risking to not have to take the stairs.
“Uh-” He patted his pockets, pulling the PDA out and turning it over in his hand. It hadn’t even really struck him before as something to pay much attention to, other than the message on it that he barely remembered reading. “Yeah. What’s it for?”
Continuing on up the stairs, Claire sighed a bit, but didn’t look too perturbed- at least he had it, and explaining the damn thing to Charlotte hadn’t been that difficult. Hopefully Hopper wasn’t a dumb hick cop; her initial read on him was optimistic.
Even if he did pull a gun on her.
“It’s your life-saver,” she summarized at first, making sure he got the point that the thing needed to stay on him at all times. “Not only does it unlock your room, you use it like a phone to talk to the other people here- either like a walkie-talkie, or text messages. Texts are like…” Her pause included the circular gesture of her free hand while the other brought the pot back up to her mouth for another quick sip. “Uh.. notes you pass in school. Except it’s on the screen. Good way to keep up with what’s going on around here.”
Hopper held his cigarette between his lips while he frowned at the PDA in his hands, turning it over again before he pushed a button that made the screen light up. It might have helped if the buttons were any bigger and he’d been less stubborn about getting reading glasses, but the buttons mostly had letters and numbers on them, and the ones that didn’t were fairly easy to figure out.
“Uh-huh…” He decided he’d mess around with that more later, and tucked the PDA back into his pocket again. “Good to know.”
Continuing their way up the stairs, he glanced at the various paintings on the wall, all of which were either moving or just blatantly staring at them- or both. Some of them even made noise.
“Is there anyone else here from your world?” he asked.
One of the paintings on the second floor landing- the portrait of a sharp-featured, zoot-suited gangster wolf-whistled at Claire as she walked by- she gave it her free middle finger without looking.
“Yeah-” she answered, veering into the hallway that lead to the dining and ballroom doors. “Three other hunters; Sam and Dean- they’re brothers with a severe co-dependent streak, so don’t get between them. And Cas. Cas is…”
Explaining Castiel to people who had no idea who he was: always an interesting puzzle, even in their own world. They had too much ground to cover to get into details, so she decided on the easiest route. “For all intents and purposes, he’s my dad.” Moving on. “That’s the dining room- that’s the ballroom.” Both were far too noisy for being ‘empty’ at the current moment. Glasses clinked and snooty, ghostly conversations came from one. Organ music and a spectral party were going on in the other.
Hopper decided he definitely didn’t need to be digging around in anyone’s familial connections, and just nodded to acknowledge her answer. By the time they’d reached the next floor, he’d finished his cigarette, the butt of which he dropped to the dust-covered ground and put out with his toe.
Not two seconds later, a hotel maid who looked like she might’ve jumped out the sixth-story window appeared a few feet behind him.
“Pig!” she yelled- no, shrieked- startling him enough to make him lose some coffee when his body jerked and he turned around.
“Holy shit,” he said, shaking the coffee off of his hand and stepping back when the maid came forward like she was going to sweep the cigarette from underneath his foot, but her dust pan and brush didn’t do her much good. She just stormed off disgustedly, leaving him staring after her. “Any clue how much longer the hotel’s gonna be like this?”
Claire also recoiled at the shrill interruption, but there was no way she could’ve kept the crooked smile off her face at what followed. She even chuckled, though in her defense, she managed to keep it mostly quiet, and behind another gulp of coffee.
“I kinda like her-” she teased, dry as the dust all over everything, then crossed in front of him to head back for the stairs.
“If things go normal, six and a half days.” She answered his question on the way up the flight toward the third floor- the library. Claire was already wondering what sort of Disney Halloween shit they’d see up there. Maybe the Ghostbusters library ghost… That’d be sort of cool. “Normally, everything fixes itself after the clock rings. Food in the kitchen, all the booze in the bar… There’s a laundry room now, but it wasn’t around when I showed up. Clothes just kinda ended up washed- they still do, but I guess you can do your own if you want. There’s also a jukebox that jumps around, room to room. It plays what it wants, when it wants…”
Hopper gave her a look for her comment, and rolled his eyes for good measure as he followed her up another flight of stairs. Luckily, they weren’t moving very fast, but still. Two flights of stairs down, and he was already starting to more seriously consider the elevator. Maybe he’d do some more asking around about it before he went for it.
“Moving juke box, laundry room, resets every week,” he sighed. “Got it.”
At least there was a library. Even if he couldn’t find anything useful in there, it would give him something entertaining. From the look of the decor, he didn’t expect there to be a TV in his room, no matter how nice of a hotel it was- or looked like it was trying to be.
“People mostly get along here?” he asked.
The library was decorated as everywhere else in the hotel- the lamps were mostly candelabras- one of which went floating between the shelves as they crossed the threshold from the landing. Claire didn’t see any ghosts, but she wasn’t about to go exploring. She and Q would probably do a sweep later, like they always did every Monday. She wasn’t sure if she was going to tell him about the new memories or not.
“Eh- for the most part,” she said. A flash of memory included that horrible week where a demon kept pulling everyone’s strings- and that wasn’t the only bad time. “-I mean when things let us. Sometimes that ain’t the case.”
He’d take that as a good thing. It was hard to expect any large group of people living together to get along perfectly well, and as long as there weren’t any major disputes going on that he had to worry about, he felt a little more comfortable for knowing it. Granted, he’d pulled a gun on the first person he met, but he wasn’t looking to start fights with anyone, or take part in any if he could help it.
“Right,” he muttered. She’d mentioned something about vampires and werewolves, and though he could ask, he chose not to. That was something he could ask someone about later. Didn’t make much of a difference right now. Glancing down at her, he was side-tracked for half a second by a question that would keep nagging at him if he didn’t ask. “You mind if I ask how old you are?”
Claire was heading back for the stairs when his oddly off-topic question caught her slightly off guard. She tilted her head at him, her nose wrinkling, brows mildly pinched down in the middle for that classic really? look.
Then one corner of her mouth twitched into its cheek.
“First you pull a gun on me, now you're checkin’ if I'm jailbait… good start, Sarge.” She didn't really think he was coming on to her, but she wasn't passing up the opportunity to make a cop uncomfortable.
The unimpressed glare he gave her was almost enough of an answer on his own. There was a reason he’d asked about her age, and it wasn’t because he was interested in her- he had a habit of attracting annoying adolescents to him without really meaning to. The longer she talked, the more he had a feeling she was going to be one of them.
“I don’t recall asking for attitude with your answer, kid,” he said, in the annoyed tone that usually got him a frown from El so deep he could practically feel the corners of her mouth twitching at him. “I’m gonna go with my first guess and figure you’re… what, sixteen? Seventeen?” Now he was just messing with her, but she’d brought it on herself. “Probably way too young to be drinking that much coffee.”
The sour grapes look he shot her was almost enough to crack her up, but the quip about attitude pushed her over the edge. Claire's eyebrows bounced up with her grin, which wasn't exactly friendly, but it wasn't hostile, either.
“Oh, I'm sorry... I didn't hear you over the sound of you pulling a gun on me. Or pouring me a beer afterwards,” she reminded in light of the coffee comment. “I could've sworn you ordered extra attitude.”
Hopper took a deep breath in through his nose, and sighed it out in an agitated huff. Whether or not she was actually sixteen or seventeen, or even a teenager, she’d stay an annoying teenager in his book. Mostly because he just kept collecting them, apparently.
“Yeah, with a side of I’m too cool for school that just makes you so edgy,” he said, rolling his eyes, before he finished off the dregs of his coffee and debated setting it on the nearest decorative table. Imagining the maid shrieking behind him again had him thinking twice about it. “Is there anything else worth showing me, or is the rest of this tour just going to be getting your sass the whole time?”
Claire snorted in the back of her sinuses, and didn't hide any of her amusement from her grin. Too cool for school? Jesus, he sounded just like Jody.
Which is probably why she intended to exert her sass as much as possible.
“All sass, all the time,” she promised, heading out the library door with her coffee pot. “But if you wanna wing your own way around, I got other shit to do- and I'm nineteen,” she added over her shoulder. “Or barely legal in your language.”