Jim Hopper (antiquechariot) wrote in valloic, @ 2022-11-20 18:38:00 |
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Except he was pretty sure his dad was going to be pissed. He’d been told that his dad wouldn’t even notice he was missing, because of magic (and hell, maybe his dad wouldn’t even notice he was gone without magic, unless he wanted Eddie working at the chop shop), but it still made him feel antsy thinking about how his dad was going to react if Eddie showed up after missing for however many days.
(Maybe his dad would actually be cool with it, now that he thought about it. His dad was always implying that Eddie should be going out and getting drunk and partying. Maybe he’d actually be proud. Who knew?)
It made Eddie antsy thinking about it though, which is why when he saw the nice ‘69 Mustang parked on the street, Eddie stopped. He looked around, totally subtle (or, not subtle at all to anyone who was looking) and tried the driverside, and then the passenger side door. They were both locked, but there was no one around, so Eddie unclasped one of the pins he had on his jacket and set to work on the driver’s side door.
Hopper didn't wake up in strange places very often. The occasional friend's couch. The back of a pick up or two. But mostly he was a bit of a homebody. Waking up in this crazy place had done a number on him already and he hadn't even really heard everything yet. He did know that he was apparently in some place called Vallo and there was a room full of stuff that looked like things his dad might own. And people had tried to explain what was going on but it had sounded like a whole bunch of crazy.
He didn't feel panicked but then panic wasn't really his thing. He decided to go for a walk and try to figure out what to do from here. Spotting a kid looking suspicious around a real nice Mustang, Hopper leaned against a telephone pole a few feet away.
"You know it's broad daylight right?" he said, reaching into his pocket for the last smoke he had in a pack. "You should at least have a lookout for this kind of thing."
Eddie jumped at the voice, but managed to stay cool (at least, he thought he did; almost anyone else would have been able to notice that he was a nervous kid that was trying damn hard to look cool, at least).
He looked over his shoulder. There was something familiar about the guy at the telephone poll, but Eddie couldn’t quite place his finger on where he knew him from. He shrugged. It probably wasn’t that important anyway.
“Are you volunteering?” he asked, shooting him a grin.
Hopper probably should've just walked away. He didn't know what the hell was really going on. But he also didn't know how he was going to get home and maybe a nice mustang would come in handy. Besides, he was kidnapped so it didn't make any sense for cops to file charges if they got caught.
With that confidence boosting bit of bullshit in his head, he stepped forward and looked up and down the street a lot more stealthy than Eddie. "I don't know yet. Do you even know what you're doing or are you just fucking around?" he asked.
“Yeah, of course I know what I’m doing,” Eddie said, turning his attention back to the lock, tongue out. A moment later, with a satisfying pop, the lock shot up. He shot the other guy a smug grin and opened the door. “I learned from the best after all.”
"The best should've taught you not to do this in broad daylight," Hopper said, though he looked reluctantly impressed when the door opened. He leaned over to stare into the car from the passenger side. He didn't know a lot about cars beyond his beat up pick up truck at home. But he knew a thing or two about fancy new alarms and being sneaky. "Better hope it doesn't start hollering. You know how to start it too?"
“Oh please, no one expects people to steal cars in broad daylight, so it’s the best time to do it. Nothing more suspicious than a long-haired teenager skulking around a car in the middle of the night.” This… was not ancient wisdom his father had bestowed upon him; his dad definitely would have waited until night, when there was no one around, to steal this car. “Anyway, I was bored.”
He reached across the centre console and to unlock the passenger seat door. “And I’m not a total amateur. These old Mustangs are easy.” He was already leaning under the wheel, pulling off the casing for the wiring. One of the first things his dad had taught him was how to identify a car alarm, which was why, when he pulled out the necessary wires and something started blaring, he was startled enough to bang his head against the wheel of the car.
“Shit, shit, shit,” Eddie said, pulling another wire. The alarm got louder. “Oh fuck.”
Hopper barely made it into the passenger seat and folded his long legs in enough to close the door before the alarm started. He probably should've just stayed outside and watched through the open door. Now he was stuck. He couldn't exactly abandon the kid.
"Old car doesn't mean all the security is old too," he said unnecessarily. He had to raise his voice to be heard over the alarm. He started looking for other sources to the alarm. Other wires. He opened the glove compartment and dug around. He twisted to look in the backseat. All of which was about as unhelpful as a giant man in the passenger seat of a sleek muscle car could be. "Can you put the wires back together or…fuck."
There was a slow tapping at the driver's side window. A cop was knocking his handheld radio against the glass.
Eddie straightened, and stares wide-eyed at the cop for all of half a second before he did what any sensible, middle-school-aged, would-be car thief would do.
He touched two wires together, heard the purr of the engine starting up, and slammed his foot on the gas. The Mustang, alarm still blaring, took off like a shot. Eddie adjusted the rearview as he drove until he could see the bewildered cop behind them, yelling into the handheld.
Whatever Hopper had been expecting the kid to do, it wasn't that. He cursed under his breath as they took off and for once in his life, actually put on his damn seatbelt.
"You're a bit of a menace, kid," he grunted. Looking in the side mirror, he saw the cop climbing into his car, smaller and smaller by the second. The siren started up behind them though and he could hear it just fine. "We're so fucked," he laughed. Adrenaline pumped wildly through his veins. "Turn there." He pointed at an alley. They needed to break line of sight fast.
Turn here? Turn where? And then Eddie saw it, the fast approaching alleyway.
He was, for a middle schooler, a pretty good driver, he thought. His dad had spent many an afternoon on Indiana country roads teaching Eddie how to outrun the cops.
This was his first time actually putting it into practice. He shifted the gearshift as he wrenched the wheel to the side.. There was a terrible grinding sound that made Eddie wince in sympathy, and the stalled and fishtailed, doing a full 180 before it bumped, side-to-side, with one of the cars parked along the road. Eddie let out a steady stream of fucks and shits and the occasional shit-fuck as he tried to restart it.
Hopper tensed as they spun and then came to a hard stop. In all fairness, it could have gone a lot worse.
The cop siren got inevitably louder as the cop parked in front of them and started talking into his radio. Hopper hadn't seen a gun come out yet, so that was something.
"Put your hands up, kid. We're not going anywhere and we don't need this to get ugly." He raised his own hands and tried to look sheepish. It was hard when you were built like a linebacker.
Eddie stared at the cop outside the door, frozen for a moment, and then he raised his hands away from the mess of wires under the steering column. There wasn’t anything to be done for it now. He couldn’t decide if his dad would be proud of him for getting arrested, or disappointed by his getting caught, but he guessed it didn’t matter much right now anyway.
The police officer opened the car door, and Eddie shot Hopper an apologetic look before he climbed out.