Chapter Text
It’s bad luck for the groom to see the bride in her dress before she’s walking down the aisle, but Steve and Nancy don’t have a particularly traditional conception of luck. Anyway, considering that the aisle is just sand-drifted boardwalk that stops a few yards short of high-tide line, nobody’s holding a casual morning walk in their wedding clothes against them.
Still, Steve feels the whole world shift when Nancy steps out of the Winnebago, holding her trailing skirts up to her knees. Nancy’s not a pure-white kind of girl, so the fern-like lace is more…Steve would say it’s like the color of the pale sands, but Robin prepped him on this.
Ecru, Mr. Soon-to-be Wheeler-Harrington. It’s ecru.
Armed with this information, he means to compliment the ecru. He means to compliment the delicate flowers Robin and El have woven into the braided crown of Nancy’s hair, but all specifics just… abandon him in this crucial moment.
He gapes; he shuts his mouth. Finally, he musters,
“You’re beautiful, Nancy Wheeler.”
“Yeah?” she asks, smiling softly. Makes him weak in the knees, then and now always. “Hey. You don’t have to look at me like I’m a doll who’s about to break.” She stretches out her hand, and he takes it.
Warm, gun-calloused, familiar.
“Maybe I’m about to break,” he says huskily. “I haven’t worn a dress-shirt in forever.”
She scrutinizes his cuffed trousers, his buttoned sleeves. They’re both barefoot.
“You look nice,” she says. “Will you take me out somewhere nice, Mr. Harrington? Beachfront views?”
They spend the early morning with the sunrise at their backs, gazing at the cool blue expanse of the Pacific, shifting yet constant. Gulls and pelicans wheel overhead, forming patterns in the lightening sky. A curl slips loose from Nancy’s crown, trailing against her cheek.
Steve lets go of her hand only so that he can cradle her face in both of his and lean in for a kiss.
“I’m really gonna like being married to you,” he whispers, when they part.
Nancy’s eyes are ocean-deep and dawn-bright. “Me too.”
When they return to the camper, it’s been practically overshadowed by all the creations their party—the Party—have made in their absence. Dustin and Mike have rigged up a hoop-shaped trellis hung with silk and paper flowers. They’ve also set up a ring of chairs, which Eleven has festooned with brightly colored scarves.
Real hippie shit, Mike said, but it was obvious he liked it.
“OK, you two nearly missed your own wedding,” Erica accuses, hand on her hip. She’s overseeing the operations like a five-star general, and hovering over Max to take any requests. Real multi-tasker, is Erica.
“Eh,” Max says, grinning beneath her dark glasses. Her vision has gradually improved, but she still uses a cane for guidance and tries not to strain her eyes in outdoor light. “I say we give them a pass. Just this once.”
“Generous of you, Mad Max,” Steve says, sweeping her a bow. “I appreciate it.”
She snorts. Since the sand is rather treacherous terrain for her, she’s stayed seated, chatting with Erica, and with Lucas when he’s not on set-up duty. Lucas’s diamond glints on her ring finger. It’s been a long engagement—but Max is used to being patient, she always says. Lucas proposed on her sixteenth birthday, right after she took her first step.
In another moment, Robin barrels towards them, coat-tails flapping. Unlike Steve, she’s wearing a tux, since she says she’s always wanted the opportunity to flaunt one outside of the depressing context of high school band. “Places, everyone!” she trumpets. “Our officiant is ready to preside.”
Originally, everybody figured that Dustin would make a perfect officiant—what with his ability to pontificate—but California’s requirements for ordination were too inconvenient for a computer engineering sophomore to add to his already crowded plate. Joyce came to the rescue, volunteering one of her friends: a Presbyterian minister from their block in L.A. who had somehow found himself saddled with the most eccentric next-door neighbors ever. He’s a mild-mannered fellow, judging by how amiably he accepted his fate of being bundled into the back of Joyce and Hopper’s Bronco and driven three hours up the coast. He assured Steve and Nancy that he would keep the details of their union highly confidential, since, as far as Mr. and Mrs. Wheeler know, they’re getting married seven months from now, in a church wedding in Syracuse, New York.
Steve doesn’t mind Syracuse, all told, but it’s not where he wants to say his real vows. Nancy agreed.
In November, upstate New York looks just a bit too much like Hawkins.
Here’s the version Steve plans to tell his kids someday: We cleaned house. We skipped town. We got everybody out that we could, and we didn’t let go of each other for the rest of our lives.
Only time will tell if those not-yet-in-existence kids will understand, but Steve has faith.
Not everybody invited could show for the little big day: Will is doing a semester in France, and Jonathan is doing a nature photography stint in the Florida Everglades. There aren’t any hard feelings to speak of, Harrington-to-Byers, but if Steve’s honest, he’ll miss Will’s presence today more than Jonathan’s. Never letting each other go, in Party-speak, does leave room for holding some people more at arm’s length than others.
The gang that’s here can’t press close enough, though: Hopper and Joyce, who will (respectively) escort the bride and groom down the aisle; Robin the best woman and Dustin the best man; Mike the man of honor and Lucas the ringbearer. Eleven and Max and Erica are bridesmaids, though they’ll all walk together, so that Max can be supported on either side.
It’s perfect, as far as Steve’s concerned.
Too good to be true, his younger, more insecure self would say, but he’s been trying, in recent years, not to doubt the blessings he counts.
Nancy disappears into the Winnebago one last time to collect her bouquet, and Dustin carefully props up the boombox on its designated card table. The card table, unsurprisingly, is concealed by yet more scarves.
“Press play,” Erica hisses, and I Want to Know What Love Is starts churning out of the speakers, mingling with the murmur of the salt-tinged breeze.
Steve has to jog back up the aisle to link arms with Joyce, then wait for Dustin and Robin to take their places beside Greg the minister under the windblown flower arch.
“Steady there,” Joyce says, patting his elbow. “Everything from here on out is the easy part.”
He’s surprised into a laugh, even though his heart is beating extremely fast. “Nobody’s ever said that about marriage, Joyce. But I like how you think.”
“You’re a good boy,” Joyce says, with one of her dazzling flashes of absolute sincerity. “You’re one of my boys. You know that, right?”
His parents will be at the shindig in Syracuse. He knows that. And it’ll be good, in a way, because they’ve come to love Nancy, and his mom hints about future grandchildren, and his dad is mellowing with age. But this—right here, and all around him—this is Steve’s family.
He leans down to kiss Joyce on the cheek.
Joyce takes her seat after their march, and Steve stands with Robin directly behind him, grateful for her whispered stream of consciousness. After years of listening to it, it's calming to his nerves.
“This is like, seriously, the most idyllic setting you could have chosen, Steve-O. I mean, Nance is the mastermind for aesthetics—you should have seen her color-matching that ecru… you did remember to call it ecru, right? But anyway, I know the ocean was all you. And that, right there, is a sign of serious growth—”
“Robin Annaliese Buckley,” Dustin says distinctly. “Let the man process. He’s only doing this once.”
“Technically again in seven months,” Robin mutters, but she squeezes Steve’s shoulder and then shuts up.
The bridesmaids’ progress is slower than anyone else’s; slow enough to run through Forever Young, which may be a cheesy choice, but Steve doesn’t care a bit. The chorus, juxtaposed with Max’s careful steps, brings tears to his eyes.
We found her, Eleven had said gravely, as soon as they were on the other side of the gate, watching their world crumble back into itself—only itself. We found Max.
And they had. It had been a long road—a slow road—but sometimes, the people you love come back.
Mike saunters down after the girls, hands in his pockets, mouth held in a straight line that can only be interpreted by those who know him as a heroic attempt to prevent the revelation of any genuine emotion. When he reaches his final destination, Eleven stands on tiptoe to whisper something in his ear. He cracks a smile, then rubs his hand quickly over his eyes.
Lucas, the only person who could be trusted not to lose two miniscule pieces of jewelry in the literal sands of time, comes next.
Then it’s Nancy's turn.
Steve remembers the first time he saw her, and the many almost-last times. He remembers all the selves he was over those harrowing years, the good and the bad. Most of those selves were scared. He doesn’t know if he learned courage, exactly, but he did learn how to reach for a better future despite his fear.
One of the many lessons Nancy taught him was that fear was no way to stay alive.
One of the many lessons Steve had to figure out for himself was that love is hard work, but if you’re lucky—in a not-so-traditional way—the work is its own reward.
She’s smiling at him. She’s marrying him.
Once, Steve clung to this like a dream: the only thing he wanted to be real. But the truth is? It’s all real—all the faces here, all the memories they share. The weight of the world has a way of teaching you your place in it. The ocean shifts, and even changes color, but it’s always recognizably infinite.
Hopper’s bear-hug nearly swallows Nancy up when they halt at the aisle's end, but she reemerges uncrushed, stepping light and quick towards Steve with her hands outstretched. This morning, he thought he was supposed say something, but now he knows that the two of them no longer need words.
He takes Nancy’s hands. He can feel the ring on her finger—soon he’ll have one too.
“Hi,” Nancy says.
“Hi,” Steve whispers. Then, with the stupidly blissful inflection of the boy he was when he fell in love with her, he asks, “Will you take me home?”
“Silly,” Nancy says, laughter in her voice and eyes. “We’re already there.”
Sit down. Inhale. Exhale.
The gun will wait. The lake will wait.
The tall gall in the small seductive vial
will wait will wait:
will wait a week: will wait through April.
You do not have to die this certain day.
Death will abide, will pamper your postponement.
I assure you death will wait. Death has
a lot of time. Death can
attend to you tomorrow. Or next week. Death is
just down the street; is most obliging neighbor;
can meet you any moment.
You need not die today.
Stay here—through pout or pain or peskyness.
Stay here. See what the news is going to be tomorrow.
Graves grow no green that you can use.
Remember, green's your color. You are Spring.
- Gwendolyn Brooks