Stranger Things belongs to the Duffer Brothers; lyrics belong to the estate of the late great Jim Croce.

After they had cleaned up the dishes from dinner, Jim Hopper was watching a ball game he didn't really care about, and Eleven was getting ready to do her "homework" in the old school books he had scrounged up for her. She went to turn on the record player, selecting her current favorite album, the one she had first heard Hopper play when they cleaned up the cabin together. You Don't Mess Around With Jim, by Jim Croce. She carefully set the needle down, and crossed the little cabin back to the table and her books.

Uptown got its hustlers,
Bowery got its bums,
42nd Street got Big Jim Walker,
He's a pool-shootin' son-of-a-gun.

Hopper listened distractedly, glad she had shown so much interest in his record collection. It was something they both enjoyed, and it was good practice with language. Sometimes he saw her following the lyrics on the liner notes as she listened, pointing to them to keep her place and mouthing the words.

Yeah he was big and dumb as a man can come...

Wait, did she just snicker? Hopper glanced over from the TV. Eleven was looking down, writing in a workbook, but feeling his stare she glanced his direction for a second with a poorly concealed smirk still on her face. Yeah, she did, he thought. Hopper wadded up a page of the newspaper he had finished earlier and launched it at her head. Without looking up again, Eleven flicked a finger his direction and sent it sailing back to bop him in the nose.

Why he did what he did next would remain a mystery to him, but a childish impulse refused to let the kid get the best of him. He took one of the small pillows from the couch and threw it straight at her table. As expected, it slowed and reversed course toward him, but by that time he had picked up the other pillow and side-armed it from a different angle. He had just long enough to see her eyes widen in surprise before both pillows stopped in mid-air, hovering threateningly.

When Hopper was reduced to cowering in the corner with the pillows pounding him about the ears, he admitted defeat. "Alright, alright! You win!" he shouted in disgust, hoping she would hear him over her own shrieks of laughter. The pillows fell to the floor, and Hopper sat down to watch TV again as though nothing had happened. But she wasn't done yet.

"Hopper?"

"Yeah?"

"No throwing things inside the cabin. It's a rule."

He sat silently for a moment, listening to the song as it continued.

"I never made that rule," he said.

"No." There was that sly look again.

"Smart-aleck."

You don't tug on Superman's cape,
You don't spit into the wind,
You don't pull the mask off the ol' Lone Ranger,
And you don't mess around with Jim.

Unless, he thought, you were a mop-headed little brat who knew how to push his every button. Hopper sighed. His mother would probably have said that he was "paying for his raising."

Author's note: Jim Croce (1943-1973) was an American folk-rock singer/songwriter who had two hit albums, You Don't Mess Around With Jim (1972) and Life and Times (1973), before losing his life in a plane crash at the age of 30. A third album, I've Got A Name, was still in the works and was released after his death.

Hopper and Eleven are ridiculously cute in season 2, of course, but also sometimes heartbreaking. They are so much alike (hard-headed, used to being on their own), and that's exactly what brings them into conflict, but it's also exactly why they need each other. In this series of one-shots I try to imagine how a common love of music (using the one singer we know Hopper likes from canon) might help them work through some of this. Especially him, because though Hopper started out to save Eleven, I think it's obvious from the much-noted blue bracelet that she is saving him too.