Time After Time (a Stranger Things fanfiction)

Addicted to Love

"Addicted to Love"

You see the signs, but you can't read

You're running at a different speed

- Robert Palmer

The distance back to Hawkins seemed so much greater than the distance they had traveled out of it. Joyce's heart pounded with every revolution of the car's wheels, pictures of Will playing in her mind: Will in the Upside Down with that thing in his mouth, Will screaming on the ground as the tentacles in the tunnels were set on fire, Will's pale face with the black veins standing out in it as the Mindflayer was expelled from his body. Could she stand to do this again, to go through all this one more time as the Upside Down came after her boy?

Hopper drove steadily, his eyes on the road, trying to keep his mind a blank, but there were too many things to think about. Russians in the mall, the Gate reopening—and El. El out there somewhere not knowing that the Upside Down was back. Sure, her friends would be with her, they would watch out for her, but they were kids! They couldn't fight for her. Not the way Hopper could. If he could, he thought, wincing as a twinge of pain reminded him that he was hardly at full strength.

A steady murmur of Russian came from the back seat, as Murray and Alexi chattered away like nothing important could possibly be happening.

"What's he saying?" Hopper demanded for at least the third time in the last five minutes.

"He's telling me the location of the key to turn off the machine," Murray explained. More Russian, and he added, "Sorry, keys. Two keys."

It made sense. "Two-man rule."

"Two-man rule?" Joyce asked.

"Yeah, two men, two keys, like a ... nuclear launch."

"To retrieve the keys there is a vault," Murray went on. "And to open the vault you need to enter Planck's Constant."

"Plank's what?"

"Planck's Constant. It's a very famous number."

"All right, so we get the keys, and then we turn the machine off." Seemed simple enough to Joyce.

"That's what he says," Murray confirmed.

"Well, that shouldn't be too hard. We can do this."

Hopper frowned. "Joyce, did you hear the part where he said the place was like an impenetrable fortress?"

"Yeah, but there has to be a way in." He always looked on the dark side, looked for the ways things could go wrong. Just once, couldn't they just go get this done without obsessing over how impossible it was?

"Yeah, there is," he told her. God, she was so naïve sometimes, so sure she could accomplish the impossible. "The military."

"Who are coming!" she reminded him.

"Well, we don't know that anymore, because you yelled at them like it was a parent-teacher conference, then you hung up on them, so we don't know what the hell's going on, because now we're— Wait, wait, what are we doing? Oh, that's right, we're on our way to rescue our children from the big bad Fourth of July celebration."

He was the most infuriating person Joyce had ever known. After everything they'd been through the last couple of years, everything their children had been through, he was making light of their danger? He was acting like this was any other summer and these were any other kids and Hawkins was any other town, and she had had enough of big bad Hopper who was always smarter than everyone else. "You know what, if you can't handle this, then just turn around, and drop me off first!"

Hopper couldn't believe what he was hearing. How many times was she going to throw herself in the middle of a situation she knew nothing about and risk her own life? Didn't she know people loved her, people needed her? He wanted to tell her that, to say that underneath his bravado he was terrified of losing what he had, losing El and losing her, but what came out instead was the usual—sarcasm and anger. "What are you gonna do? You gonna walk back to Hawkins?"

"I will do anything if it gets me away from you!"

Murray's voice, screaming in the night over the rumble of the engine, cut off whatever Hopper might have said in reply. "Children! Children! Childrennnn!! This interminable bickering was amusing at first, but it's getting very stale, and we've still got a long drive ahead of us. So. Why don't you two cut the horseshit and get to the part where you admit your sexual feelings for one another."

"Whoa!" Hopper yelled, hands lifting off the wheel. Sex had nothing to do with this! Joyce's stubbornness, that's what this was all about.

Joyce shook her finger in Murray's face. "You are way off base, buddy!" She may have had one or two thoughts about Hopper, and what it had been like in high school, and what it could be like again, but she wasn't about to get in bed with anyone as loud-mouthed and sarcastic as Jim Hopper. No, sir.

Murray was having none of it. "Spare me, spare me, spare me. Yes, yes, he's a brute. I know. Probably reminds you of a bad relationship, and gosh, you'd really like a nice man to settle down with, but admit it, you're real curious to know what he's like in the sack."

It was a bit too close to home. Not that she didn't know—she remembered. But the hit about Bob was too much, even if Murray didn't know what he was saying. Joyce drew away from him, pressing herself against the door.

Turning his attention to Hopper, Murray went on, "And you. Ha! Well, you're just a big man-baby who'd rather act tough than show his true feelings, because the last time you opened your heart, you got hurt. Owie."

Hopper tried not to think. He didn't want to see Sara's little face. But to his surprise, the face he saw in his mind's eye was Joyce's, from all the way back in high school, when she'd chosen Lonnie over him. He'd thought he had forgiven her for that—but had he? Was he still punishing her for that long-ago decision?

Murray wasn't done. "And now, rather than admit these feelings, you're dancin' around one another with this mind-numbing and frankly boorish mating ritual. So, please, for my sake, either quit your bickering—or pull over, tear off those clothes, and GET IT OVER WITH ALREADY!" He screamed the last few words at the top of his lungs, then collapsed against the back seat with a sigh of relief.

Neither Joyce nor Hopper had any desire to speak, or to look at each other, or to think after that tirade. They stared straight ahead, watching the road disappear under the hood of the car.

In the back, Alexi addressed a question to Murray in Russian. After a brief exchange, both occupants of the back seat started howling in laughter.

And the car rolled on, across the Indiana state line.