Jailbird || Stranger Things

sixty-one ➵ inhibitions (or lack of)

Back To The Future was released to the public on the fourth of July, 1985. On that same evening, the party of kids, teens, and parents who had been involved in the inter-dimensional happenings of Hawkins Indiana were scattered around town, fighting their own monsters.

The youngest were quite literally fighting a beast of human skin, flesh, and bone, on the run in the Wheeler family car.

The parents were travelling towards the Indiana-Illinois border, with a Russian fugitive and a conspiracy skeptic in the back of a stolen car with the plates of TODFTHR.

The mixed bag of their friends and siblings, however, were locked in Starcourt Mall, truth serum swimming through three of their veins.

Having avoided the Russian guards once they made it out of the elevator, Dustin and Erica were tugging the older teens through the service corridors of the mall, still pursued by the two men. Teresa's hand had been taken by Steve, who would intermittently squeeze it when he wanted her attention.

"Where are we going?" Robin asked as they crashed round another corner in their hurry to get away.

"Just trust me," Dustin called back, tugging on Robin's hand while Erica guided Steve who was still giggling at moments.

Dustin suddenly came to a stop, pushing the door they often used to get round the ushers in the theatre to get into a screen. "All clear."

The moment they entered the biggest screen, Teresa's eyes opened widely in wonderment.

    "What did I tell you?! Eighty-eight miles per hour!"

"Come on," Dustin tugged on her t-shirt, encouraging her along as she pulled Steve behind her down the row of seats. Spotting three at the front, Dustin directed the teens into them as the movie continued to play.

"Sit!" he pointed angrily as if they were misbehaving dogs.

"No, no, no! These seats are too close!"

"Dude, these seats blow," Steve joined Robin in their argument.

"Then don't watch the movie," Dustin replied.

"We wanna watch it."

"Then watch it!" Dustin snapped, making one of the other audience members get up to shush him.

"Sorry," Dustin waved a hand, but as Reese turned and showed her slightly bruised face, the man immediately sat back down in mild intimidation. "Whatever you do, don't go anywhere," Dustin told the three of them.

"Fine, Dad," Steve replied with a tone he'd never dare actually take with his father. With a snicker from Robin, he comfortably slipped down in his seat, glancing to his side to see Teresa gently shake her head as Dustin and Erica rushed away to the other two empty seats on the other side. "Did you hear what I said?" he asked Reese, who turned her head, noticing he was munching on some popcorn he undoubtedly picked out from the garbage.

"Yes, Steve, I heard," she whispered more discreetly than he had, getting a smile from him as he offered the crumpled box of popcorn. "I'm okay," she chuckled softly, not noticing the way his eyes scanned her face with some adoration.

Screw this relaxed inhibition thing. He was making it difficult for her to keep her own feelings locked up, and definitely was not helping him. She was trying to ignore everything he'd been keeping locked up, seeing as he had limited control of revealing it all under the influence.

This was gonna be a long two hours.

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Murray and Alexei had spent most of the ride from the border of Illinois to Hawkins talking in Russian. The scientist had grabbed a notepad and a pen from the mess of a table back at the bunker to draw an outline.

"What's he saying?" Jim asked from the driver's seat.

"He's showing me the location of the key to turn off the machine," Murray relayed before he listened to Alexei who was starting to pick up some English and corrected him. "Sorry, 'keys'. Two keys," he nodded, listening to the Russian before he continued to translate.

"Two-man rule," Jim clarified.

"Two-man rule?" Joyce looked to him.

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

"But, uh, to retrieve the keys, there is a vault. And to open the vault, you need to enter Planck's constant," Murray continued to translate as Alexei kept explaining with the help of his sketch of a map.

"Planck's what?"

"Planck's constant. It's a very famous number," Murray explained, though neither of the two in the front seats knew what he was talking about.

"All right, so we get the keys, and then we turn the machine off," Joyce put it simply.

"That's what he says."

"All right, well, that shouldn't be too hard! We can do this."

"Joyce, did you hear the part where he said the place was like an impenetrable fortress?" Jim glanced at her before directing his eyes back to the road in front of them.

"Yeah, but there has to be a way in."

"Yeah, there is," he nodded in agreement. "Our military."

"Who are coming," Joyce reminded him.

"Well, we don't know that anymore because you yelled at them like it was a parent-teacher conference, and 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 do—Oh! Wait, that's right! We're on our way to rescue our children from the big, bad Fourth of July celebration!" he dramatised making the two in the back share a glance at just the tone.

"You know what, if you can't handle this, then just turn around and drop me off first," Joyce countered with an edge to her voice that Murray wasn't sure he'd heard from her.

"What are you gonna do?" Jim laughed. "You gonna walk back to Hawkins?"

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

"Children! Children! Children!" Murray decided to intervene, leaning forward in his seat to put his head between them. "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!"

"You are way off base, buddy!"

"Oh, spare me, spare me, spare me!" he raised his voice to shut up their very translucent objections. "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," he looked to Joyce before he turned to Jim. "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," Murray pouted sarcastically, "Owie," he dismissed Jim's immediate response of a rebuttal. "And now, rather than admit these feelings, you're dancing 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!"

With a deep sigh, he ignored Joyce's shocked gasp and Jim's grumbling, and he sat back in his seat.

God, Teresa had been right about her father hiding something.

Confused, Alexei looked over to him after realising neither of the fort seat passengers would dare look at each other, and asked in Russian what exactly just happened.

"I told them they should have sex," Murray replied in the other man's native tongue.

"They have not had sex?"

"No."

The car continued on, crossing over the Indiana border with raucous laughter coming from the back, and an embarrassed, slightly annoyed air lingering in the front.