Never going Back ⋆ Stranger Things

3. The Things Heard and Seen

Content warning; homophobic slur (one mention of the f slur).

Friday, March 21, 1986.

Basketball games were boring enough to begin with. Spending an entire basketball game on the sidelines, watching from the bench as his teammates fucked themselves over, was downright torture for Oz. He'd debated for a long time with himself on whether he would even show up, but considering the way he'd almost ruined his own life that same afternoon he figured he had to. If only to save face. Besides, his only other option was to spend a night at home with his mother, and even basketball was better than that.

Oz had been naive to think that he was getting his spot on the team back for the most important game of the season. He was a liability at best, there was no way the coach would consider putting him in the game for even a second.

Oz was busying himself with chewing on his bottom lip as he stared ahead with a hard gaze. Andy, once again, fumbled the ball, dropping it long enough to allow an opposing player to easily pick it up and run off with it.

"Son of a—" The coach yelled out from the left of Oz, quickly shoving his fist in his mouth before any curse words fell out. "Johnson, get it together!"

"You gotta stay on 'em!" Jason called after Andy, sounding equal parts exhausted and riled up. The team was almost three points behind—they were royally fucking this up.

"Coach..." Oz started. The way the coach's head snapped towards Oz made him regret even trying. As much as Oz didn't really care about it all, he was good at basketball, and he knew it. He knew he could help the team, if only he was allowed to play. In some stupid way, Oz wanted to take this moment to prove himself.

"Over my dead body, Reynolds," the coach responded, "this game is too important."

Oz didn't argue. Instead, he turned his eyes back on the game just in time to see Josh Madison be shoved into the ground by one of the Falcon boys. The referee whistled loudly and Jason was on the boy in a second, shouting at him. The referee jumped between them, and in that moment Oz was almost thankful that he hadn't been on the field.

Josh had to be carried to the bench by Andy and Patrick, sitting him down next to Oz before running back onto the floor. They exchanged brief glances with Oz, but he shook his head in return. It was nice to know that even the other boys wanted him to play, even if it was not going to happen.

Coach quickly looked over the bench, purposefully avoiding eye contact with Oz.

"Sinclair," he waved over to one of the new boys, a freshman Oz hadn't really gotten the chance to talk with much. He seemed nice enough, eyes lighting up like a kid on Christmas when the coach motioned for him to step into the game. "you're in, son!"

And the game was back on. Sinclair seemed unsure on his feet as he stood on the field, like a deer on ice. The Hawkins Tigers had fallen four points behind on the Falcons, and even Oz could feel the palpable tension that hung in the gym. This was the Tigers' home turf, after all. It would be downright embarrassing to lose now.

Oz's mind, unwilling to register said embarrassment, had drifted to other things. He'd been having a slight tension headache all afternoon, and the noise of the gym was threatening to make him spiral into a full-blown migraine. He wasn't sure what was causing the headaches he'd been having lately. No matter how much water he drank or how many aspirin he swallowed, they only ever seemed to worsen. Oz simply wasn't the kind of person to even go to a school nurse, let alone a real one, but even self-medicating with his mother's heavy painkillers hadn't helped much. Perhaps he should ask a professional for help, at some point.

His attention was pulled back into the room by the sound of Jason calling for a time-out, making the players huddle around the coach. Oz wished he could get in on it, show them how Andy was totally slacking off and how their power forward wasn't even playing forward, but he didn't. Couldn't, more like it, but he also didn't want to make them think he cared enough to get involved. He was simply a competitive person, and watching other people be losers hurt his head. Literally.