#ic. lucas

[upsides]

grass presses damp-cool through the cotton of their backs, green blades needling skin in this benign way, bikes abandoned nearby like shed exoskeletons. the wheels tick once and twice and then give up on the ghost of motion. both will and lucas stare into the over-washed blue, too wide and too vast, clouds drifting peacefully as though it was not to be made of the same substance that becomes the storm on the radar later. ENTER LUCAS: flat on his spine and arm cooked up to point. “  that one looks like a dinosaur. ” the cloud obliges by wobbling, a lopsided mass with a snout if you'd just squint hard enough at it ( MAYBE. ) lucas tilts his head, recalibrates, closes an eye like a studying critic. “  or maybe a shoe.. definitely a shoe. ” the sentence definitely carries the full authority of this philosopher who has decided, in this moment, to stand by his claim ! their friendship is not loud. it does not announce itself with big vows or clasped hands or any of that storybook nonsense. it exists in proximity in the way lucas never quite wants to leave will's orbit or in the way will seems to know where lucas is without looking. ( THEY ARE SIXTH SENSE CALIBRATED BY YEARS OF SHARED AIR. ) they are not mirrors and not twins, they are angles that fit without the effort. a pause, and he considers. “  dinosaurs don't really have laces, i guess. unless they're tryin' to fit in. which would be .. kind of sad, i think. ”

＊ ‎☆⠀*  @wizardslays + STARTER CALL ... from lucas.

[upsides]

instinct does not knock. it seeps and insinuates, braids itself through the marrow with the patience of ROT and lucas feels it before he can name it. feels it the way you can feel the weather coming on or feel the itch of a healing-over wound. the architecture pressed inward at bolique angles, a geometry that refuses agreement, walls leaning like conspirators. it's a liminal sort of compromise. ⁽ IN ALL WAYS, HE FEELS AS THOUGH SOMETHING IS HERE AND SOMETHING IS WATCHING. ⁾ “  this place's got bad vibes. ” lucas says, the words tumbling out sideways, like testing the floorboards with a foot. “  or is it just me? ” the silence that follows is empty, curated and deliberated. he swallows, jaw tightening and recalibrating. this isn't panic or dread or the good, honest terror of a thing with claws. THIS IS MISALIGNMENT. a frequency just off from human comfort, a radio station between channels where static sounds of voices. “  not scary .. ” he adds, because the words are his tools and you don't use the wrong wrench on a live bolt. “  just.. wrong. really wrong. ” breath fogs faintly. lucas hates how familiar and particular this flavor of uh-oh before his mind signs off on it. “  ... you too ? ”

＊ ‎☆⠀*  @shewrath + STARTER CALL ... from lucas.

[upsides]

＊ ‎☆⠀ .. ⁱⁿᵇᵒˣ : RANDOM QUESTION PROMPTS , CURRENTLY ACCEPTING. .. @felt1t , will. “ WHY DO THEY TREAT ME LIKE THAT? ”

the lockers still ring with this afterimage of laughter that wasn't ever funny to begin with. the belly has already come and gone and the hallway keeps steady the way hallways are meant to, bodies flowing around the wreckage of lucas and will without ever stopping. junior high has never been a place to pause and assess the damage done to the "little guys".

will is still on the ground when lucas reaches him. not down down, nothing cinematic, but doubled with palms flat and knees scabbed. lucas's chest does that little thing it does in moments like these ( ... ) hitch sharp, memories loading. IT MIGHT BE A DIFFERENT HALLWAY, BUT THE MATH IS STILL THE SAME: he's been there and it's always dumb kids with dumber reasons and too much room to swing their dumb arms around. “  they're assholes. ” he says, one hand out like muscle memories and clock works and such. lucas takes will by the hand, as they don't have to negotiate this part, and he pulls will to his feet with a grunt. “  they treat everybody like that. ” a beat. then comes the correction because lucas isn't stupid and will isn't stupid. “  okay, no, they don't. but you don't have to let 'em ! ”

lucas reaches for will's backpack without much asking to, fixing the strap that's been twisted up and brushing off the dust. ( A SMALL THING, BUT IT MATTERS ALL THE SAME. ) he remembers a time, sixth grade, behind the gym and both of them bleeding a bit and laughing because they looked utterly ridiculous. he remembers dustin attempting to fix lucas's busted bookbag strap with electrical tape as though that would ever work. it hadn't.

“  maybe you should start punchin' people. ” lucas continues, nodding once, solid and decisive. he's cracked the code ! “  like .. emotionally punch. ” and lucas makes a weak jab in the air.

[upsides]

＊ ‎☆⠀ .. ⁱⁿᵇᵒˣ : RANDOM QUESTION PROMPTS. CURRENTLY ACCEPTING. .. @mcxine , max. “ TRUTH OR DARE? ”

dusk bleeds itself soda-sticky over the crumpled foliage of the sinclair backyard where two bicycles lean against the fence, spokes catching porch light in epileptic glimmers.

summer gnats orbit them. the milk crate throne that is max's seat and the grass stained exile that is lucas's mark the perimeter of a kingdom that belongs to exactly no one else but them: the half-feral, grief-struck and two kids trying to bond in something here in hawkins, indiana. she says it with the feline boredom of a girl who might torch the world just to see it sparkle and he, this poor kid, responds like someone who has forgotten she is mayfield by lineage and menace alike. “  dare. maybe. ” syllables drop in like loose change and lucas hears them echo back with far too much fate in the ring. and immediately, like a soldier remembering the minefield under his boots. “  actually, no ! 'cause you're gross. ” how the moment swells with it, this comedic cathedral of younghood: spite-take recollections of hot sauce yogurt, of slurpee syrup marinades, of one max mayfield stirring such culinary abominations like a witch bored with her cauldron.

note the young man's retreat: a tactical withdrawal suspicious with affection, like knowing her too well. the way his face scrunches, the way his knee tips to hers, the way this amalgamation of dumb almost adulthood glows around them. grass hisses with sprinkler ghosts and adolescent doom, cicadas humming their synth. “  truth. definitely truth. ”

[upsides]

❝ i just want to say thanks for saving my ass back there. ❞ from richie to lucas

adrenaline skitters far along his nerves, electric residue of almost-loss of too-bright corridors and carrion sweet air. residue of him, sir trashmouth, improv martyrdom, standing where the world tried to fold him in. time has not resumed so much as limped, dazed, back into its own pacing. and lucas, jaw locked, shoulders squared, speaks. “  yeah well, stop putting your ass in places that need saving. ”

its a line that's harmless on paper, maybe, but here does it detonate: soft-grenade of adolescent fury braided into grief, the kind that knows exactly what a body looks like when it doesn't come back. max pale in hospital light. eddie in rust, the chalk-outline memories a town pretends doesn't exist.

lucas's mouth keeps going. “  seriously, man. ” it's not barked, not bitten. it lands heavy and swollen with the neon horror that had every cell in his body screaming don't let him go when richie bolted towards monster-jaws, martyr shaped and smart mouth. lucas looks at him now, not at his jokes or his smirks, but at the pulse in the boy's throat, stubborn and blaring proof of his continued existence. “  you almost didn't walk back out. ”

[upsides]

evening's breath hangs with that copper-tasted quietude of post-battle aftermaths, dusk rots into bruise-blue sort of murk and streetlamps stutter their sodium haloes.

two silhouettes: wolf-ragged and boy-worn, occupy the rust-sinewed interior of a van that has been stage, bunker, crypt and confessional. this metallic tink-tink-tink of a machine exhaling its heat and in the starved hush between them, eddie hangs the oath. if anyone tried to hurt you, i'd kill them. @munsontm a sentiment too iron-heavy for air that falls this thin. what follows is not a recoil , or the boyish flinch expected from lucas sinclair, but stillness and a suspension of breath. “  i have my own legs. my own swing. ” a fact, forged into the stillness.

“  i don't want you to. ” something of a word like kill should rattle them, should rattle lucas. but it does no rattling here, instead, his hand extends, knuckles meeting eddie's in a brief, incendiary grip. it's a gesture neither handshake nor embrace but that liminal space of brotherhood-blessing that renders their wordless vow. “  i just need you not to disappear. ” the cosmos ever witnesses to hawkins' cruelty, finds itself briefly startled by the honesty, by the fact that two boys broken into soldiers dare to speak without war-paint or martyrdom.

lucas speaks in a dialect of survivorism: learned not from textbooks or war grounds , but a language with no dictionary, just this long nightmare of staying alive through all these nights you weren't supposed to.

[upsides]

ⁱ . cathedralic gymnasium, if such a word can be grafted onto this room plastered in failing streamers and the migraine-hum of fluorescents. heaves with the afterimage of motion, with the spectral residue of school-spirit euphoria, with silhouettes whirling in fragmentary constellations beneath a disco ball whose mirrored facets stutter like a dying star. color beads: paper-orange, fall-red, bruise-purple. fall into love homecoming '85 ! is written on a banner that droops like a wet prater over the entire decadent collapse of adolescence gathered here tonight. lucas sinclair, the boy who stands under the flickering glow as though the light itself is torn between illuminating him or apologizing in inadequacy. the boy max has not spoken to, not really, not honestly, in far too many days. his eyes keep scanning the edges of the room, the barely-there gravity pulling toward where she stands. max steps forward. stomps forward, really. cuts through the drifting couples, through the soundclouds of cheap cologne and hopes. the micro-second she'd reached him, the silence between them was louder than any song the disc jockey had queued. just come dance with me, please. @mcxine a plea soft as dust, yet irritated as a rash. and lucas.. poor, brave, luminous lucas, looks at her with all the startled awe of someone who was submerged underwater and breached the surface. “  me ? ” no, the chair. yes, you. the syllable cracks. oops. it's small, stunned. “  for real ? ” eyes widening, pupils dilating as if recalibrating this new universe. “  yeah- okay, yeah. ” a swallow, visible and audible. he extends his hand, fingers uncertain, shaking on the edges, like he's offering her the first page. once taken, it's off to floor. he's dragged, practically. somewhere, the disco ball spins, somewhere, a slow song wails. but here, in this mahogany of a gymnasium floor, in this flickering threshold of noise and light and mistakes, a boy and girl step into the gravitational pull. “  i thought ..y'know. that you were still mad at me. at least a little. ” a breath held, a brittle half grin of nerves. “  unless this is like, a hoodwink to step on my feet or somethin'. ” the joke spills out like a defense mechanism lined with hope, like he's trying to cram his fear back into something shaped like humor.

[upsides]

ⁱ . the gymnasium's roar is dissolving into a thin, nagging aftertaste of sound. sneaker - squeak ghosts, the metallic clang of a ball off a rim. halftime posters droop, concession stand sugar air hangs heavy, and the skeleton of the bleachers is exposed and half vacant aside for two spectacles. chrissy is in her uniform, lucas in his. her words arrive not with the practiced cadence of a pep rally, but with the flattened tonality of someone scraped thin. this bleacher polished wood might give way at any second and reveal the hellmouth underneath. that's the world's game. they want to push you, poke on you, see exactly how much you can take. @greenscrunchy lucas sits a step below her, gym bag at his feet, jersey clinging like second skin, the residual heat of competition simmering within his ribs. the scoreboard had long since cut to black, but the charge yet remains. he is, by all accounts, meant to be basking. instead he is listening. she is listening. “  'specially the good ones. ” the admission drops between them like coin to court, small but loud the way it rings. he fiddles with a fraying thread on his wristband.

for a second, he could almost see it: these elusive hands she speaks of, the ones that prod and shove and measure. it's all one big arcade game, isn't it ? insert, pull lever, see the cracks. lucas speaks again, slowly, as though testing the strength of his own words. “  but .. what if that's only the game if you play it ? ” a pause, the kind where thought must stumble to catch up. “  maybe you don't got to. ” the simplicity of it belies the seismic shift it suggests. the gym lights buzz in their cheap constellations overhead, casting them not as star player and captain, but as two kids in secondhand sneaks marooned in the afterglow of a game neither agreed to play.