Touchdown. Steve Harrington

prelude. Renegade

"Language," quips Jim, because spending all his time with a bunch of middle schoolers who swear like sailors is rubbing off on him. And also because Jessica looks to be about sixteen and looks like she weighs a hundred and ten soaking wet. It's a little bit ridiculous, the fact that Jim has reverted back to this kind of adult, so he looks around and squints his eyes. Pretends he's thinking about something.

She's looking at him now, at least. Frowning slightly, her eyebrows tilted up in surprise. "I'm not twelve," she argues, and really, Jim does not want to be dealing with this on a Saturday. It's three in the afternoon. He should be spending time with El. Resting.

"Sorry, force of habit," he apologizes, knowing he doesn't sound very sorry at all. "Listen, Jessica —"

"Jesse."

For god's sake. "Listen, Jesse, you gotta go home. You can't be running around people's properties."

"Says who?" she's looking at the ground again.

Jim's eyebrows go a little bit up. "Says me," he answers, pointing at his chest, a little bit too forcefully.

The girl shifts her weight again. "Whatever."

Jim sighs once again; cracks his knuckles. The urge for a cigarette is a permanent itch in the back of his head — and shit, maybe he shouldn't have started smoking at the ripe age of eleven years old, but it's not like he can turn back time. Not that that would be his number one concern. There are a lot of things he would do differently. A lot of things he would change.

He closes his eyes; brings up a hand to try and press away the upcoming headache. "This is the third time I've been called by some terrified mother that something is lurking in their backyard. You are trespassing, you realize that?"

"I'm not bothering anybody," the girl says, like Jim didn't just say that people are, in fact, bothered.

"This isn't the best time to be creeping people out," Jim continues, albeit a little forcefully. "People are still on edge, since —"

"Will Byers disappeared, yeah, I know." she bites the corner of her lip in an action that Jim recognizes from the mirror as something angry. "That was, like, two years ago. He's fine now, isn't he?"

If only she knew.

Jim resist the urge to outright growl and instead sends up a prayer to God asking what the hell he ever did in his life to deserve to deal with the town of Hawkins, Indiana.

God doesn't answer, of course. Him and Jim are a bit on the outs. Jim sniffs.

"Jessica — Jesse," he starts, instead, back to the task of trying to get the girl to look at him. "If you keep doing this I'm —"

Jessica's head suddenly snaps up to stare at him, eyes wide, panicked. "You can't call my mom."

A pang of sympathy runs through Jim's body, and he attempts to soften his features as much as he can, but he doubts that it actually works. "I didn't call her the last two times, but I'll have to if you keep doing this."

The girl's doing a pretty bad job of concealing her panic, her eyes darting around, so Jim takes off his hat and asks, quietly: "What's so important in the woods, anyway?"

Jessica's expression shutters close so quickly that Jim fails to hide away the small sliver of disappointment, and it shows on his face. The girl looks back to the ground. Furrows her brow into that vaguely angry, teenage angst look.

"Nothing," she says, cold, punctuating. She kicks the ground once more, and then lifts her head and looks Jim straight in the eye. "I won't bother anybody."