Chapter Text
Ever since they walked out of Hawkins Middle for the last time in June, Lucas has been thinking about what high school is going to be like. He’s probably been thinking about it for longer than that, but it was more like one of Mr Clarke’s hypothetical questions than anything, before, abstract and distant and not something he really needed to worry about yet. It was just the doors shutting behind them one last time, the rest of his grade whooping and hollering around them, Lucas with them even, that made it real.
Because he won’t lie: he’s nervous. He thinks after the monsters it’s, like, small potatoes but still: he can’t stop thinking about it. He thinks it’s expected but the others don’t say they’re nervous — Dustin said he’s excited for the “new intellectual possibilities” the one time Lucas tried to bring it up at lunch before school let out for the summer, and Mike had said he just glad that he’d get to hang out with Eleven all day, though Will made a face before saying he was excited too so (which Lucas thought maybe he actually wasn’t, or maybe it was something else totally), and then Mike changed the subject back to Eleven — again — so then Max had roasted him about it, and Lucas’s question disappeared into the ether.
Like, even though no one copped to it, and because he definitely clocked how Max didn’t say anything either way at all — yeah, he still doesn’t think it’s just him. He thinks it’s pretty natural actually.
Still, he wonders if it’s just maybe different for him, you know? A lot of things are different for him, from them, in ways they don’t really realize, and maybe never will. He thinks Will gets it, because he thinks things might be different for him too, both of them outsiders visibly and intrinsically and unable to change the facts and figures of themselves. Max knows too, he thinks.
(He’s grateful that Billy has graduated, that he won’t have to see him every day, that she won’t have to walk the halls with him. Maybe they can hold hands and not have, just, that baseline of anxiety that thrums under his skin when he wonders if Billy will see it.
“He’s projecting, and he’s jealous,” Max had said once, offhand, “because it’s even worse for him if he wants to hold hands with,” and then she’d cut herself off, mouth shut tight, and Lucas gets it anyway, changes the subject so she doesn’t have to, and that’s that. Because her step-dad is a piece of shit, and Billy is half the time too, but Lucas feels this tiny kernel of sympathy for what he thinks. He imagines Will, a little, hates the comparison. He hates thinking about any of it. The world is so deeply unfair, he thinks.
But he knows what his mom would say: just because you’re hated doesn't give you the right to hate back. She always tells him to be kind, to be the bigger person, to take the high road. So he tries to, even if he can’t stamp out the more bitter, hurt part of him, tries to be there for Max because it’s hard for her too, and isn’t that what being a good boyfriend is about? He hopes it gets easier as he gets older, or that he just gets better at it.)
So he thinks a lot about how to make it easier for himself, and for the rest of them. Sometimes he’s worried the others aren’t serious enough about this kind of thing, because they don’t, you know, really get it, and so it’s up to him to keep them all safe when they’re rushing headlong into danger because of, like, scientific curiosity and bullheaded bravery and shit like that. And Lucas is the strongest, he thinks, physically: sure Mike and Will are both getting taller, but Mike has arms like cooked pasta and Will couldn’t hurt a fly if they paid him, to say nothing of Dustin, who could actually probably do a good job fighting with words but with fists? No way.
Lucas loves his friends but, out of all of them, he can’t help but think of himself as, like, the man. And if he’s the man, he’s the one that has to protect them, them and Max, who’s too fierce for her own good sometimes, and El, who high school is probably going to eat alive, and Lucas can’t just stand by and let that happen, okay? Not to any of them.
He thinks about it, and how Dad always talks about how great his high school years were, and Lucas thinks Dad was kind of the man too, is, always loving and protecting Mom and him and Erica, and the country even, back in Vietnam. He’d been the captain of his basketball team, which probably helped, and he’d been legitimately so good back in the day, which also probably helped his high school years. He’d played in college too, and almost went pro but then the draft had happened and Dad always says when he came back it had made him realize that, while he liked playing, what he wanted more was to have a family and a good life and just be happy.
So he had, and did, and now Lucas is here, and he’s thinking about Dad and his friends and the future.
Lucas is pretty sure that’s gonna be the way to go, basketball that is, and he knows he won’t even mind it. Because it’s not like he doesn’t like it either. Dad instilled a love of it in him, and Lucas will always sit down to watch the Sixers with him when they’re on and he’s around, but he’d loved DnD more when he was little, and fantasy and sci-fi and nerdy shit. Dad never begrudges him that, though Lucas can tell it bums him out a little that neither he or Erica seem inclined to follow his footsteps and be a little sporty.
Just — he’s never tried it like this, never even talked about it with the guys, because they don’t like sports, and Lucas was, is — he’s happy with how he is, what he loves. But maybe he needs a different edge, you know? To get through high school; to get them all through high school in one piece. And it’ll just be a bonus that it’s something he can enjoy too.
He knows exactly who he should talk to, too, has since the idea first occurred to him that this could be the thing. He doesn’t want to get Dad’s hopes up by talking to him about it, because maybe he won’t be good at it, or it won’t stick because it turns out he hates it or something, and no one else has a sporty parent, though Mrs Wheeler used to be a cheerleader, he knows.
They do all sort of share a sporty big brother, though. Or, like, a brother in law? An ex brother in law maybe? Or just their endlessly annoyed babysitter who isn’t actually their babysitter, though that’s kind of an unwieldy title, he thinks.
Steve was never someone they used to pay much attention to before. Mike bitched about him endlessly when he was dating Nancy (though he’d been the one to breathlessly relate the tale of Steve and the Nail Bat and the Demogorgon to them, so). They’d viewed him with the benign disinterest Lucas thinks most kids would view their friend’s big sister’s jock boyfriend, mostly, but then Lucas had been in that junkyard with him and Dustin and Max and the demodogs and then he’d been with them at the Byers, with Billy, and Steve had put himself between Lucas and Billy without a second’s hesitation. Then he’d protected them again in the tunnels, and Lucas had maybe thought, Wow.
He’d been Dustin’s, though, after that, and maybe a little Max’s even if she’d always hisses and spits like a cat with its tail pulled when anyone brings it up. Erica’s the same way over him, so Lucas just keeps his thoughts to himself.
And he is also around for the rest of them. Maybe it’s in smaller ways, and not one on one like with Dustin, but he’s still carting them around when any of them walkie to ask, and he might roll his eyes so hard Lucas thinks they’re gonna pop out of his head when they “forget” their wallets before they go to the diner but he still pays for them, even if he also makes like seven jokes about letting them become indentured servants at Dinah’s washing dishes. And yeah, sure, he talks to all of them like he could care less about them but Lucas thinks he probably actually cares so much it probably hurts. He even once watched Lucas and Erica for Mom and Dad on a Saturday so they could do a date night, and he’d only let Dad give him gas and pizza money.
He knows Steve is the one to talk to. He played, obviously, and Lucas is pretty sure he’d been, like, way better than everyone else on the team. He’d made the varsity team right after try-outs, apparently, and he’d been majorly popular, from what Lucas could tell by the view from Hawkins Middle. He’s also demonstrably the man, in a different way from Dad, too: in a movie kind of way, you know?
Asking him is a different thing though because, again, he’s not really Lucas’s anything. And yes, yes, he’s nice to them, and Lucas thinks he’s, like, cool and all but there’s a part of him that wonders about how much of that is Steve himself, and how much of it is him trying to get back with Nancy.
So he’s maybe even more nervous to head over to the mall one afternoon, by himself, to find Steve at the job he recently got hired at. Dustin is at camp, has been for a while now, and Mike is making eyes at El while Chief Hopper threatens to walk into Lake Jordan, probably, and Max is grounded, and Will is doing Will stuff, so it’s perfect timing, really. He doesn't know what to expect, but at least if he gets shot down, no one has to know but him.
It takes him a minute to work up to it, shuffling awkwardly on his feet in front of the ice cream case. Steve’s just kind of staring at him, rolling his eyes a little and idly twirling his scoop because he thinks Lucas is here to mooch off his employee discount like they usually do, or ask him about getting snuck into the theater again. That mean coworker of his is glaring at him too from where she’s leaning up against the back counter, but she’s always glaring at them so he ignores her.
“Sinclair?” asks Steve, in a tone that suggests it’s not the first time he’s said his name.
Lucas focuses on the collar of his sailor uniform that Mike says is dumb but makes Max and El smirk (and Will go red, but they all pretend not to notice that) and takes a deep breath.
“I want to learn to play basketball,” he tells him.
He looks up to find Steve still staring at him. His scoop is still twirling and he does not blink. He repeats, like maybe he thought he heard him wrong, “You want to learn to play basketball?”
“Yes.” He nods firmly, takes another deep breath, and gets ready to really sell his case.
Mike once said that Steve was like a golden retriever in a man’s body. He’d meant it really derogatorily, of course, in that snotty little brother way of his, and Dustin had immediately disagreed, said he was more like a really fancy cat, the kind you have to regularly take to groomers, and who only wants to be pet on their own terms but loves you in their own way. And Lucas, even though he thought this might have been the dumbest argument they’ve gotten into yet, had agreed with Dustin.
But right now? Watching as a variety of expressions flit across Steve’s face, none of them staying for long, until he becomes big-eyed and practically vibrating in place? He kind of gets where Mike was coming from.
“Really?” Steve is asking. He leans forward on the counter. “Hell, man, really? Oh my God, I never thought one of you little shits would ever be interested in sports! Dude! Oh my God!”
“So, is that like a yes, or — ”
“Fuck yeah, Sinclair! Are you free Saturday?”
Lucas nods. Steve’s smile grows impossibly large, and he starts talking all fast at Lucas about what to wear and to bring and does he have Chucks? Or is he an Adidas guy? Because he has extras, and what size is he, he’ll bring a few pairs, and Lucas just nods more, agrees where he thinks he should, and lets Steve bound around the ice cream shop until his mean coworker finally gets sick of them and says she’s taking her break so Lucas has to leave so Steve can actually do his job.
Steve picks him up at seven am on the dot, bright eyed and bushy-tailed. Dad eyes Lucas in his gym clothes with a raised brow, and then Steve in his own even more incredulously — his green Nikes match his Hawkins High gym shorts perfectly, which is kind of insane, Lucas has gotta give his dad that — but he doesn’t say anything, just asks Steve if he wants a cup of coffee before they go off to wherever it is they’re going.
He thanks him but declines, bundles Lucas into his BMW, and drives them to the nice free court behind Loch Nora, just a few minutes from Steve’s parents’ house.
Lucas thinks they’ll get started immediately on just, like, shooting hoops, but after Steve launches a pair of suspiciously pristine Converse Fast Breaks in his exact size at Lucas’s head, he makes them do a bunch of stretches and then jogs them up and down the court for a bit. He doesn’t fish a basketball out of his backseat until maybe an hour and a half in, and then they practice dribbling for another hour.
Probably this should all kinds of piss Lucas off but Steve seems to be taking this more seriously than he’s ever seen him take anything — and that includes the Barbie hair salon he’d helped Erica set up that one night — and Lucas feels kind of warmly pleased about it instead. He’d asked Steve to teach him about basketball and even though this feels like basic kid shit he does, you know, know, he’s really trying here.
And he's super passionate, too, correcting Lucas’s form gently but firmly, adjusting how he holds his hands on the ball, commenting on his footwork. He’d probably make a hell of a coach, he thinks, and gets a little sad that Steve is probably going to disappear after this summer to some fancy school his parents want him to go to, though Steve has been kind of tight lipped about school around them, so maybe he’s wrong there.
It’d just be cool if he stayed, he thinks, hung around to give them rides, gave them shit about the arcade, and maybe regularly came to Lucas’s basketball games in between classes at the community college a few towns over.
If he makes the team, that is.
They move on to shooting after a while, Steve apparently deciding Lucas is ready for it. He shoots a few himself in demonstration, then hands off the ball to Lucas and says, “Go for it, man.”
He copies the stance he’d watched Steve shoot from and lets one rip. He doesn’t even hit the backboard.
“Shit,” he says.
Steve jogs over to grab the ball as it bounces into the grass and brings it back to him.
“First one’s always the hardest,” he offers. “C’mon, shoot it again. Lemme look at your form a little.”
So he shoots again, and misses again. Steve runs after the ball again, and returns with a thoughtful look to his face. He dribbles the ball idly as he says, “Your shoulders are really tight. You look like you’re afraid of the ball, man, you gotta like — loosen up, shake it out. Okay?”
“Okay.”
His third attempt sees the ball bounce off the rim, and so do the next few after that. Steve grabs him by the shoulders, makes him actually shake his body out, and keeps telling him to try, even though Lucas is feeling increasingly like he wants to quit. He liked the dribbling and trying to dodge around Steve when he was showing him how to block, and he is good at that, he thinks, but maybe he’s shit at shooting. Which would suck, because he thinks that’s kind of a big part of basketball, you know?
Still, he keeps trying, because Steve looks so damn earnest, and once he says, all serious faced and kind, “Hey, I believe in you, okay?”
He kind of hates that the three-pointer he takes after that is nothing but net, but also he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t glowing with pride as soon as Steve starts hooting and hollering, grabbing him around the waist and tossing him into the air like he’s a little kid.
“Nice!” he crows, dropping Lucas back to the ground. “Sinclair, you smoked that!”
He flushes. “Really?”
“Would I lie to you?” he asks. “All morning, dude, I’ve just been here thinking: this kid is totally a natural. You know? JV won’t know what hit ‘em come tryouts!”
“It took me, like, twelve times before I made it though,” he protests.
“So?” Steve doesn’t follow the ball into the grass this time and instead ducks back to the duffle he’d brought with him to grab two water bottles, tosses one to Lucas, and then just pops a squat right on the court, hairy shins sticking out in front of him. “You’re just starting, man. Like, you never played before. There’s a learning curve! Like, there’s levels to your Daggers and Dorks stuff, right?”
Lucas rolls his eyes. “Sure, but that’s different.”
“I don’t think so.” He chugs some of his water, the plastic crinkling under his hand. “I mean, I’m just saying, you gotta work up to the big bads or whatever, right? You’re not going in as a level two pleiades guy to the, the Demogorgon.”
“You were a level two up against the Demogorgon,” he says.
“Shut your mouth, I’m totally, like, a fifteen super kick ass pleiades,” Steve says.
“Dude, I know you know it’s a paladin. You don’t have to pretend with me.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He winks. “Anyway, don’t, like — just be in the moment with it, yeah? Take a breath, let go of the stress, and just be. It’s not rocket science or brain surgery or whatever. Lives aren’t on the line, though it feels like it sometimes, man, when the game is really close, I won’t lie, it feels like that. But just be. Don’t let it bully you.”
With little to no input from his brain, Lucas says, “Yeah, but I’m pretty easy to bully.”
Steve stares, big-eyed once more. “Aw, man.”
“Shit. Forget I said that.”
“That’s gonna be nope from me, little buddy.” He thinks would be patronizing from literally anyone else, but this is Steve, so. He can kind of get away with anything, with them, he thinks. He’s saying, “Is that what this is about? Because if you’re worried about that kind of thing — I mean, I don’t want you to change so you can be —”
“No, no,” he says. “It’s not. I mean, it is a little? But I also, like — I do like it. This. Basketball. My dad used to play? And maybe I didn’t think it was something for me, once, but, like I really think it could be, now. I didn’t know if it really was going to be something for me but. It’s cool. It’s different. I like it. I guess I also just thought it could be, be armor, for me, I guess. Maybe. If it worked out.”
“I think I get it,” says Steve. “I guess it was that for me too? I mean. I’ve always had it, but it’s also been armor. I never had to, you know, think about stuff like you do. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Lucas says quietly.
“It’s not though,” he says. “You’ll, um. I’m gonna have this talk with Dustin too, and the girls and Will, and Mike, that punk ass little — but you ever need anything, okay? Just come find me. Like you did with this. I’m around, you know? And if there’s something to be said about peaking in high school it’s that all the high schoolers still, like, respect you. So you tell me if you need anything. And I’ll make it happen.”
He drinks some of his water while he thinks of what to say and can’t come up with anything other than a lame, “Sure.”
Steve just nods, like it’s good enough in his book. It probably is. “Good. And when you make the team, you gotta let me know the roster, because I’ll tell you who’s dope and who isn't, right? I mean, Patrick McKinney, right of the bat, heh, you two will get along.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. He’s been rocking this sick flat top, and he’s a great point guard — not as good as me, or, like, you’ll be with some more practice, but he’s good people. Good teammate. He won’t lead you astray.”
“Okay.”
“Hey, you want a milkshake or something? We can swing by and sneak Max out, and go annoy the shit out of my coworker, what do you think?”
“Sure,” he says again.
Lucas goes to grab the ball while Steve throws out their empty waters and goes to throw the duffle into the car. He produces fresh shirts for both of them too, and a stick of deodorant. He even hits Lucas with a spray of the travel cologne he keeps in his glove box, winking when he says they can’t subject Max to their manliness, and then waves him off when he tries to give him back the shoes.
“Too small for me these days,” he says, and Lucas just curls his toes into the soles, which still feel a little fresh and stiff even after this morning. He thinks maybe he’s got blisters. He doesn’t care.
“Thanks for this,” Lucas tells him quietly after he starts the engine and puts his hand on the back of his headrest, looking over their shoulders as he backs the car out into the lane.
“Of course, man,” he says. “I had a blast.”
“Me too.”
“So. Same time next week?” asks Steve. “We can play a little horse or something next.”
“Well.” He eyes him. “Won’t Dustin be back then?”
“And?” he says. Comfortably driving them down the quiet streets of Loch Nora now, towards Max’s place, he starts flipping through radio stations idly, turning the dial, and songs fade in and out through the static. “What, he lose his legs at camp or something and nobody told me? Henderson can bike his ass to the arcade with Mike, and do nerdy shit while you and me practice. Hell, let him come heckle us, might do him good to actually get some sunlight after dweeb camp. I got so many tricks to show you, man, you don’t even know. Unless — like, unless you don’t want to, or whatever.”
“No,” says Lucas, maybe a little too fast. He feels his cheeks heat up but Steve doesn’t notice, eyes on the road, fingers on the dial. “No. I could use all the help I can get. Thanks.”
“Sweet.” The hum of a harmonica comes through the changing stations and he freezes, then slams his hand, delighted, on the dash. “Oh, shit, I love this song! Screen door slams, Mary’s dress sways! Like a vision she dances across the porch as the radio plays, Roy Orbison singing for the lonely — anyway, yeah, next week, right? Well, maybe not next week, it’s the holiday and I gotta work that weekend, so the one after.”
“Yeah.” He leans back against the headrest, watching Steve bop along to the music, humming and singing every other word still. He’s got a nice voice, he thinks. “Yeah, that sounds great. Thanks, Steve.”
“Anytime,” he says.