Chapter Text
Modern Love (gets me to the church on time)
Chapter One
Summer of 1993
The wedding countdown had begun.
Steve wasn’t sure how he was roped into such a roll as the fucking honour attendant or whatever Nancy and Robin called it. It was the maid of honour, that’s what Steve was. He still got to wear a suit, of course, just with a tie with a colour that matched the bridesmaids dresses. The bridesmaids being Robin, El and Max. Steve was somehow lumped in.
Steve, who was the paragon of heterosexual man. Obviously.
“Nancy, you do remember we dated?” Steve had casually asked, as he and the other bridesmaid gathered at a table to look over Nancy’s wedding binder. It was the thickest binder Steve had ever seen in his life and the table quaked under its weight when Nancy dropped it.
Max gave him a sharp look and Nancy merely raised an eyebrow. “You want to bring this up now, Steve?” Nancy asked, sweetly.
“Well, isn’t it weird I’m the maid of honour-,”
“Honour attendant!” Robin and Nancy corrected immediately.
“-to my ex-girlfriend’s wedding?” Steve finished, ignoring them.
Nancy raised an eyebrow, “Are you saying you would rather be part of Jonathan’s party with Argyle, Will and Mike?”
There was a beat of silence before Steve muttered, “Okay, what’s the flower plan here, ladies?” Nancy beamed.
That had been during the early days of the wedding plan.
Now, the wedding prep (“It’s different than the plan, Steve!”) was beginning and Steve was finding himself driving out past Indianapolis to the Pine Lake Ranch more often than he wanted. It was a beautiful venue but goddamn was it a lot of work to sort out. Thankfully, since Nancy pitied him, she had hired a wedding planner to sort everything out, leaving the littlest possible to Steve to sort. Which was fine with him. Honestly, it was preferred. He had been so relieved that he didn’t need to plan the wedding that he had bought Nancy flowers. (“You can’t keep buying women flowers, Steve. You’re the one who likes flowers, not Nancy!” Dustin snapped his fingers at Steve as though he wasn’t paying attention to his speech on the flowers and, in all honestly, Steve wasn’t.)
Cassidy Gibson, the wedding planner, was from Indianapolis but she handled herself well with the demands of the budget of the small town Wheeler family. Thankfully for Nancy and the Byer’s family, the Wheeler parents had made a little wedding fund for Nancy and Jonathan a while back and they didn’t have to totally pay for the weddings themselves. It had been after the supposed ‘earthquake’ in ’86 in Hawkins, families started saving money and stowing it away for that big emergency that could possibly happen again.
Of course, it hadn’t been a random earthquake that destroyed the town but a monstrous otherworldly power that Steve and company had somehow nicknamed after a Dungeons and Dragons villain. Vecna. The name still sent shivers down Steve’s spine, standing the hair on the back of his neck up and making his gut clench and curl. It was a lesser response then what it had been years back. The name would have had Steve reeling back into the trauma of those four years.
Even a government-instituted therapist couldn’t take away the night terrors.
It was strange, how time moved after a trauma. How the months felt like years but the years felt like months. Steve found time was such an enigmatic thing to track. It’s concept almost meant nothing to him. He could tell the passing of time by his kids growing older, the birthdays and Christmases, graduations and milestones that came and went.
Steve had many jobs through the years. Scoops Ahoy, Family Video, professional babysitter. In a small town like Hawkins there wasn’t much to do that didn’t make you want to take a drill to your skull and give yourself a backyard lobotomy. So Steve did what he did best. And that was not listening to his parents. So he worked at a new coffee shop that popped up during the earthquake renovations and had been doing so with Robin at his side, instead of, you know, going to college, becoming a lawyer and being a real Harrington man.
His father expected him to fall back into sixteen year old Steve, who was, and Steve had faced it long ago, a fucking dickhead. A fucking dickhead who listened to his parents and wanted to join the family law office in Chicago. That was who Steve had been.
Now he was the best goddamn babysitter in town and he fucking cared. He cared about people so much it made him ache. He cared about his kids and his misfit friends that the Upside Down had trauma bonded all together into a mismatched little group of mavericks and oddballs. And he was one of them. He was a fucking misfit oddball no matter what people thought of the once mighty King of Hawkins High. He was what Dustin and his other D&D nerd compatriots would have called “the exiled king”.
God, Eddie would have loved that term.
Munson, Steve mentally corrected himself. Munson, not Eddie. What are we, best friends?
After the small town hicks of Hawkins had smeared the Munson name through the mud (and then stomped on it for good measure) with Eddie’s supposed satanic cult and killings, and, Eddie, having survived the final battle with more scars than one thought possible, he and his uncle Wayne moved away. Steve hadn’t kept in contact with Munson other than the occasional comment from Robin, who had kept his phone number somehow, someway.
He was living, as far as Steve knew, in Indianapolis where people didn’t give a shit about who he had been. In the sense of him having been accused of the mass cult killings that Vecna had actually caused. He was still performing with a band that wasn’t Corroded Coffin, as Gareth and Jeff were still in Hawkins themselves. Eddie had been cleared after the ‘earthquake’, when the government swooped in and made up some -albeit rather wild- story about a Victor Creel copycat that Eddie had fought off to save Chrissy Cunningham in his trailer that fateful night but, ultimately, failed. The town ate it up but the Munson name was still haunted.
Like all the kids involved were haunted.
In general though, Steve was happy for Edd-Munson. Goddamnit his name is Munson. He had made it out of Hawkins, just like he had always wanted. He wasn’t surrounded by the torches and pitchforks of the small-town anymore.
Steven wondered if he would ever have the nerve to make a similar move. To where, Steve wasn’t sure. He had no idea where he would go but he hoped he would go somewhere. He didn’t want to die in Hawkins, having never seen what the the world had to offer. But he didn’t want to be alone either. He couldn’t drag Robin with him. Robin, who was happily dating Vicki from high school band still. It had taken them a while to pull their shit together but they had, in the end. Just like Nancy and Jonathan.
That’s what Steve needed… A relationship. A meaningful, romantic relationship. A longterm, grow together kind of relationship.
Steve sighed at the idea. Now that… that would be nice.
“Steve?” Steve shot up straight from where he had been leaning against his BMW and looked at who called his name. It was the wedding planner, wearing a pencil skirt and a flowing, ruffly blouse and was standing clutching a clipboard. Her heels were impossibly high and Steve wondered how she had wandered from the chalet over to the parking lot where Steve was.
“Hey Cassidy, uh I’m not late again am I?”
“Nope, in fact, you’re right on time this time!” She chirped, smiling at him. Her eyes slid down his form, checking his jeans which, admittedly, were tight, and his white shirt, tucked down into the waistband of the jeans with a button up tee thrown overtop. His utmost casual. Steve bit his lip and squirmed under her assessing eye. Every time he had met her, she had let her eyes wander over him and he wasn’t sure if it was an appreciation -which he usually got from women, not that he was being bigheaded or anything- or if it was judgement for his slovenly style of clothing. Either way, Steve didn’t really care but he rather it didn’t happen.
“We’re just going to go over the flower arrangements today and have you check with the table settings.”
Steve bit back a grunt of annoyance, merely nodding. He pulled out a folded note from his pocket to read in Nancy’s impeccable handwriting: Make sure the pink peonies are only on the head table and the guest tables have white sweet peas bouquets!!!
Nancy had been investigating the language of flowers and both flowers had been chosen for their meanings. Sweet peas for good wishes, friendship and kindness. Peonies for romance, compassion, prosperity and, of course, happy marriage. Steve had to make sure that it was perfect to what Nancy envisioned and really, Steve was ready to fucking fight anyone who didn’t want to give Nancy her dream day.
Following the long path up to the chalet, Steve listened to the clapping of the heels on the cement as they walked in silence. When they made it to the doors, Steve did a little jog to beat her to the handle, pull the door open and hold it for her.
Cassidy grinned at him, “A gentleman!” And entered the building.
Steve sighed once she was in the lobby and out of earshot before he hurried his pace to follow her once again.
“Holy shit!” Steve blurted, once Cassidy led him into the ‘reception barn’. It was all filled with tables this time, not empty like the first time he had seen it. As Cassidy had described it was a 6300 square foot barn with 36-foot tall vaulted ceiling, rustic chandeliers and metal detailing on the exposed wood beams that crossed overhead. It also included the 100-foot long covered porch, and the veranda overlooking the pasture and the lake.
The barn was long with round tables dotted around the space. One table had a long white silky table cloth, with nine seats around it, the pale pink ribbon Nancy was using for everything tied in decorative bows on the backs of the chairs. There were porcelain white plates with numerous utensils and champagne flutes sitting around a large bouquet of, to Steve’s great relief, white sweet peas. Nestled next to the bouquet were a couple of fake candles and some little greenery. It looked enchanting.
Grinning Steve said, “Nancy is going to love this. If everything turns out this good, this wedding is going to be perfect.”