#ic. lucas

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. ”

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 ? ”

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.

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.

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.

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.