Work Text:
Era: Post-Canon, Post-Season 5 Epilogue
Status: Canon Compliant Meta
I. Family Ties: Building a Dynasty
Charles Sinclair; born January 13th, 1943 (♑️ ☀ ♈️ ☾ ♉️ ↑) in Hawkins, Indiana; black hair, dark brown eyes (Black); Vietnam veteran/production manager at an auto parts factory
Sue “Susie” Anderson-Sinclair; born August 15th, 1944 (♌️ ☀ ♋️ ☾ ♍️ ↑) in Hawkins, Indiana; black hair, dark brown eyes (Black); Secretary
Lucas Charles Sinclair; born April 3rd, 1971 (♈️ ☀ ♋️ ☾ ♉️ ↑) in Hawkins, Indiana; black hair, dark brown eyes (Black); High school history teacher/basketball coach
Maxine Elizabeth “Max” Mayfield-Sinclair; born July 17th, 1971 (♋️ ☀ ♉️ ☾ ♈️ ↑) in San Diego, California; bright red hair, blue eyes (White); Work-from-home consultant (basically a life coach to put it in modern terms)
Samuel Chase "Sam" Sinclair; born May 7th, 1994 (♉️ ☀ ♈️ ☾ ♋️ ↑) in Hawkins, Indiana; bright red hair, dark brown eyes (Biracial)
Emily Sue Sinclair; born April 24th, 1998 (♉️ ☀ ♈️ ☾ ♋️ ↑) in Hawkins, Indiana; black hair, blue eyes (Biracial)
Erica Suzette Sinclair; born August 1st, 1974 (♌️ ☀ ♑️ ☾ ♌️ ↑) in Hawkins, Indiana; black hair, dark brown eyes (Black); Independent venture capitalist/quantitative strategist
Dustin Clarence Henderson; born May 29th, 1971 (♊️ ☀ ♌️ ☾ ♒️ ↑) in Chicago, Illinois; brown hair, blue eyes (White); Aerospace research engineer at Purdue/NASA Technical Fellow
Edward Storm “Eddie” Sinclair-Henderson; born May 30th, 2002 (♊️ ☀ ♑️ ☾ ♐️ ↑) in West Lafayette, Indiana; black hair, gray eyes (Biracial)
* Thanks to their distant Scandinavian (Anderson) and Scottish (Sinclair) ancestry, Lucas and Erica are carriers of lighter hair and eye color genes which were revealed when they had kids with red-haired, blue-eyed Max and blue-eyed Dustin respectively.
*Charles and Sue were high school sweethearts but Charles's Vietnam service in the mid 1960s is what delayed them starting their family.
II. The Middle School Sweethearts: Lucas & Max
* November 7th-8th, 1987: Realizing that Lucas was the one person in her life who never left her, even when he wasn’t sure if she’d ever wake up from her Vecna-induced “coma”, Max promised herself that she’d never take him for granted again. Lucas, for his part, was equally determined not to let her out of his sight. So they resumed their romantic relationship and decided that whatever they did next, they’d do it together. They were forever bonded, soulmates forged first in friendship and puppy love, then in tragedy, death, yearning, and survival.
* May 27th, 1989: A fully recovered Max graduated from Hawkins High with her friends. Because her mom was away in an inpatient treatment program for alcoholics, she'd been staying with the Sinclairs. Sue and Charles already saw her as their future daughter-in-law so they didn’t mind, knowing she and Lucas were moving to Terre Haute in the fall anyway to attend Indiana State University together.
* July 17th, 1989: Lucas proposed to Max with blue raspberry Ring Pops on her eighteenth birthday. Ever the strategist, he’d been worrying about ISU’s freshman dorm requirement due to their shared Vecna trauma, and decided to take matters into his own hands. They paid Erica $10 to be their witness and headed down to the Roane County Courthouse to make it legal.
* 1993: Following their graduation from Indiana State, Max with a BA in Psychology and Lucas a BS in Social Studies Education, they returned to Hawkins. Max started her own work-from-home life coaching (or to use a more period accurate term, consulting) business, helping others “get their shit together” while Lucas secured a job as a history teacher and basketball coach at their old high school.
* May 7th, 1994: Samuel Chase Sinclair was born at 10:15 a.m. Lucas almost passed out while Max was in labor because he was so nervous to be back in a hospital setting with her, despite the much happier circumstances. They chose the name Samuel in honor of Max’s biological father Sam Mayfield and Chase as both a nickname for Charles and a nod to Max’s “zoomer” title within The Party. Erica and Dustin were chosen to be his godparents.
* April 24th, 1998: Emily Sue Sinclair was born at 9:15 a.m. They honored both of their mothers, Sue and Susan, with her middle name and chose Will and Holly as her godparents since Eleven, who would’ve been a godmother, was gone.
Other tidbits:
* During their college years at ISU, Lucas got back into basketball and joined an intramural team, hence his decision to add coaching to his career plan. He still enjoyed the sport and shooting hoops in the driveway with Sam and Emily became one of his favorite ways to unwind after a long day of teaching.
* They've had three dogs (all Jack Russell Terrier x Mini Schnauzer hybrids, aka "Jack Schnauzers") as a family: Snickers (1993-late 2007), Jakers (early 2008-2023), and Scout (late 2023-present).
* Lucas changed his mind about joining the military so he could always be with Max, only to find out later that the entire Hawkins group had been blacklisted anyway thanks to Dr. Kay’s files. Talk about dodging a bullet. Literally. Instead, he took up LARPing and joined a historical reenactment society to scratch the tactical itch he still felt.
* They went to the movies every Friday night, a tradition they continued with their children.
* Max realized that California was no longer her home but she brought Lucas and the kids there a handful of times to show them her old skate haunts and the beach. Sam and Emily always begged to go to Disneyland, too.
* When Sam was a baby, his first word was "fireball" because he'd overhear it every time his "uncles" got together to play D&D. Auntie Erica taught him "crit hit" which became his favorite thing to yell as a toddler.
* Sam and Emily stayed close to their parents, both attending ISU themselves when the time came. Today, thirty-one-year-old Sam is married with two-year-old boy-girl twins (born March 11th, 2024) and works as a civilian digital forensics examiner in nearby Columbus, Indiana while twenty-seven-year-old Emily still lives in Hawkins, teaching math at the high school alongside her father and expecting a baby girl of her own.
III. A Nerdy Power Couple: Erica & Dustin
* 1989-93: While Dustin was away in Atlanta studying Astrophysics at Georgia Tech, Erica graduated from Hawkins High but decided to forgo college so she could focus on dominating the local investment market, much to her parents’ chagrin. However, Sue and Charles reluctantly conceded after she gave them a lecture on Capitalism and why four years of college was a “bad investment” for someone with her “business prowess.” Being the smartest girl in her peer group, Erica didn’t have many close friends so she often hopped on The Party’s ham radio network to discuss nerd things with Dustin whenever she couldn’t reach Lucas or Max.
* 1990-91: As the rest of the country panicked over the recession, a sixteen-year-old Erica saw a “discount period” for her portfolio. Using the volatility of the broader market downturn (fueled by the Gulf War oil spike and rising unemployment) to her advantage, she bought into consumer staples and tech leaders like Walmart and Microsoft, having correctly bet on cash-strapped families flocking to discount retailers and the beginning of the software boom. By the time the economy began to recover, her portfolio had significantly outperformed the market average, providing her the independent capital she needed to launch her venture career from the comfort of her childhood bedroom.
* 1993-1995: After graduating from Georgia Tech, Dustin returned to Indiana to complete his masters in Aeronautics and Astronautics at Purdue. While visiting his mother Claudia as well as Lucas and Max in Hawkins, he was impressed to find a nineteen-year-old Erica who’d already out-earned most entry-level brokers. Their dynamic shifted from “annoying know-it-all” and “sassy younger sister” to intellectual equals over a 48-hour D&D marathon because Erica realized Dustin was the only person who spoke her language. Not to mention, they’d both experienced the horrors of the Upside Down, Dimension X, Vecna, and the Mind Flayer, so they understood each other in a way few others ever could. It was a match made in Nerd Heaven and they started dating on her 20th birthday. Lucas, of course, acted like an overprotective big brother at first but Max told him to chill.
* November 18th, 1997: Dustin proposed to Erica with a ring he’d forged out of aerospace-grade titanium at the Purdue lab. It also featured a lab-grown gray diamond and she made him wait exactly ten minutes while she calculated the durability of the metal plus the long-term yield of their partnership before saying yes.
* December 21st, 1998: They married in an intimate ceremony in Hawkins before settling permanently in West Lafayette. Lucas and Max served as their best man and matron of honor, and a four-year-old Samuel Chase was the ring bearer. Erica kept her own surname, Sinclair.
* 1999-2001: They spent the first few years of marriage focused on their careers, Dustin on his research at the “Cradle of Astronauts” and Erica establishing her firm as a regional powerhouse.
* May 30th, 2002: Edward Storm “Eddie” Sinclair-Henderson was born at Lafayette Home Hospital. He was named after Eddie Munson and the iconic X-Men character. Lucas and Max are his godparents.
Other tidbits:
* Every Sunday night to this day, they hold a formal “Strategy Session” to discuss the upcoming week, managing their marriage and household with the precision of a D&D campaign.
* Eddie inherited their combined genius. He could calculate a compound interest rate before he learned to ride a bike and spent his childhood as the “technical consultant” for his cousins Sam and Emily, ensuring the Sinclair kids were always the smartest kids in the room. He's also a wicked DM.