#⭐ steve harrington; aesthetic

[bookgeekgrrl]

My media this week (5-11 Feb 2023)

ˢᵒ ᵗʰᵉ ʰᵃʳˡᵉʸ ᵠᵘᶦⁿⁿ ᵛᵃˡᵉⁿᵗᶦⁿᵉˢ ˢᵖᵉᶜᶦᵃˡ ᶠᵉᵃᵗᵘʳᵉᵈ ᵇʳᵉᵗᵗ ᵍᵒˡᵈˢᵗᵉᶦⁿ ˢʰᶦʳᵗˡᵉˢˢ ʳᵉᵃᵈᶦⁿᵍ ᵇʸʳᵒⁿ'ˢ ˡᵒᵛᵉ ᵖᵒᵉᵐˢ ʷʰᶦˡᵉ ᵖᵒˡᶦˢʰᶦⁿᵍ ʰᶦˢ ᵉᵐᵐʸ ᵃⁿᵈ ᶦ ᶜᵒᵘˡᵈ ⁿᵒᵗ ˢᵗᵒᵖ ˡᵃᵘᵍʰᶦⁿᵍ

📚 STUFF I READ 📚

😊👂‍Murder at the Charity Ball (Miss Underhay Mystery #11) (Helena Dixon, author; Karen Cass, narrator) - another episode in this cotton candy cozy series

🥰Plastered (Zenaidamacrouras1) - 59K, stucky no powers AU; single dad bucky + architect Steve - charming; solid versions of the characters, very enjoyable

😊Half a Soul (Regency Faerie Tales #1) (Olivia Atwater, author; Rafe Beckley, narrator) - quite enjoyed this, liked the neurodivergent rep, very relieved at the lack of 'cure' ending - it did make me want to read/finish the Sorcery & Cecelia series by Patricia C. Wrede

😍Knife Skills (Hark_bananas) - 72K, post-WS recovery fic; reread, forever fave, absolute perfection

💖💖 +180K of shorter fic so shout out to these I really loved 💖💖

save a horse, ride an ex-jock (alligator_writes) - Stranger Things: Steddie, 9.8K - hilarious, almost-crackfic of a meet-cute at a country bar where electric bull riding shenanigans ensue. If you've seen that video, you get it

eat me alive (emryses) - Stranger Things: Steddie, 7.2K - baby's first rimming - eddie gets the full 'steve harrington treatment' - just delightfully filthy and also tender af

Auld Lang Syne (Annakovsky, drunktuesdays) - AEW: OC/Chuck Taylor, 36K - Family Man AU - do I watch wresting? I do not. Did I still get emotional while reading this? I very much did. shoutout to the great writing here!

shipling rivalries (ScarlettSwordMoon) - Batman: , 5.2K - HILARIOUS crackfic where all the batkids debate & present their cases for who Dick should be in a relationship with. Bruce regrets his entire life. Damian gets to say "That’s what Richard deserves: a strong warrior who can care and provide for him. I believe the correct terminology for it is a ‘daddy’."

📺 STUFF I WATCHED 📺

Scooby Doo, Where Are You! - s2, e5-6

Night Court - s1, e1-3

Harley Quinn - "A Very Problematic Valentine's Day Special" [s3, e11]

Hot Ones - Kate Hudson Stays Positive While Eating Spicy Wings

🎧 PODCASTS 🎧

It's Been a Minute - The love and longing of Luther Vandross; Plus Grammy nominee Samara Joy

ICYMI Plus - The Anal Bead Cheating Scandal That Rocked the Online Chess World

The Sporkful - A French Chef And Cincinnati: A Love Story

The Atlas Obscura Podcast - Marchand Dessalines

Shedunnit - A Detective's Farewell

⭐Off Menu - Ep 139: Nadiya Hussain

You Must Remember This - 1983: MTV Aesthetics, Flashdance and Risky Business (Erotic 80s Part 6)

The Atlas Obscura Podcast - The Rainmaker

Strange Customs - Andrew Seidel | The Lines

⭐Vibe Check - Happy Black History Month, Gahdamnit!

ICYMI Plus - How a 9-Year-Old Took Over TikTok

Into It - Rihanna Should Take Notes from These Super Bowl Halftime Shows

The Atlas Obscura Podcast - Creston Dinosaur

Song Exploder - MUNA "What I Want"

Off Menu - Ep 178: Fern Brady

Endless Thread - My Canadian Girlfriend

Ologies with Alie Ward - Scotohylology (DARK MATTER) with Flip Tanedo

The Atlas Obscura Podcast - The San Juan Island Pig War

It's Been a Minute - Hot and kinda bothered by 'Magic Mike'; plus Penn Badgley on bad boys

Our Opinions Are Correct - Encore Episode: Gender Essentialism

Digital Folklore - The Internet is The New Woods (Monsters, Ostension, & Moral Panics)

You're Dead To Me - Valentine’s Special: Georgian Courtship

⭐Hit Parade Plus - A Little Love and Some Tenderness Edition

🎶 MUSIC 🎶

The Essential Luther Vandross

Lizzo

Presenting Bad Bunny

Reggaeton Essentials

Folk Metal Forever

Old-School Reggaeton

Alestorm

CREDITS: Burt Bacharach

MUNA

Pop Tropical Bailable

[starsinshadows]

firelightfables​:

Something close to a laugh barked out at the venom in Steve’s voice. Not quite one, but close. Surprisng Billy too with it and having him glance down then away, as if to wave off how long it had actually been since he’d nearly managed that. “Noticing a trend, that’s for damn sure. Surprised you didn’t call it Demo Dimension or something.”

But even saying the words over in his head - demogorgon, demodogs, demobats, the Upside Down - didn’t erase what the place had been. Somewhere too dark and damp and dead. And while each moment spent outside of it felt like a breath of something maybe not normal but at least better, he was still achingly aware of just how quickly this could all go away. One sudden drop, a sudden noise, and he’d wake up by a dead fire with his axe in hand fighting for his life.

Compare though. It was an odd way to put it and for a moment Billy glanced over, confusion in his face. Working through that particularly puzzling sentiment and coming up wanting. He was well aware how different their lives had been. But Steve had an aura about him, an orbit. One Billy had felt drawn to like nothing else in Hawkins, and one he’d have done anything to be recognized in.

It had never been about comparison though. Not really. Something he was, perhaps, just now seeing for what it was - a failure in anything it was supposed to be.

The news was certainly not the biggest blow he’d been dealt tonight. But it felt like something else added on and perhaps he should have asked what the hell had Steve scrambling like a kid hiding weed. Instead, however, Billy shifted in his seat and tried to ignore his own roller coastering mood. Breath in. Breath out.

“Home?” An eyebrow raised, head turning a bit to glance over at Steve at the use. “You know, I honestly didn’t think you’d ever call anywhere but Hawkins home. Now here you are, bein’ the city boy I knew you could be.” The smirk was perhaps missing the heat of his usual smugness, but the shadows under his eyes was explanation aenough.

It wasn’t lost on him that Steve had used we as well. A sort of relief and an uneasiness rising at that. Grateful, if that was the word, for not having to find with whatever forty years in the future held alone. 

“Eu da Upside Down Stank, Harrington. Don’t even notice it anymore.” A grin came with that, though, even as he reached for the hand crank for the window. Stopping when realizing it didn’t have one. The noise of it going down drew a startle from him, but he merely glanced at the button and put two and two together. Huh.

Clearing his throat, the car rumbled down the road for a few miles before Billy, finally, found what he wanted to say. “So what’s the future like, king? Cause I gotta say, the shit playin’ on the radio isn’t giving me a lot of faith in it and the way you keep not talking about it makes me think there’s a lotta shit coming real fast. And I’m the kinda guy who prefers to just face it head on. So.”

And he glanced over. “What the fuck happened to cassettes?”

    The almost-laugh was as surprising to Steve as it was to Billy, from the look of the other, but Steve was also surprised because he remembered Billy's laugh and it was never that. It could be sharp, sometimes kind of crazy (he'd never unhear the way Billy laughed while they fought), but it was mostly just nice. Billy had a really good laugh when he was just enjoying something, and that broken sound wasn't right. It was something, and it meant there was room for Billy to reclaim it, but it wasn't what Steve was used to hearing. "Okay, in my defense, I probably would have because of the trend, but the kids did most of the naming. I only got involved cause I showed up at Byers' house and there was a demogorgon on the way, so I learned on the fly."     If Billy had verbalized how the felt about the naming versus the place and monsters themselves, Steve would have agreed there, too. The names just didn't inspire fear the way they should have if you hadn't experienced the monsters and the place for yourself, but what did they expect? Dustin had always been a little too excited about the crazy things going on in Hawkins, just like most of the kids, and it had scared Steve even more on their behalf, if that was even possible.     'Compare' hadn't honestly been the right word and Steve knew it after saying it, but he'd taken it off of Billy's statement and rolled with it, so now he was stuck with it. What he'd really meant was rivalry, and how Billy had to grab for everything Steve had ever done and had to prove that he was better at it, even after Steve realized none of it mattered and he just didn't care. That had been a rough reckoning, but nothing like an Upside Down emergency and demodogs to make high school drama seem extra stupid. Of course, he knew nothing about this 'orbit' he apparently had, and didn't understand how trying to get his attention could be anything about just wanting to be near him. It just didn't make sense.     Billy didn't comment and Steve just let it slide, attention caught more by the question of 'home' than anything else they'd said about rivalries or comparing notes. "What? I mean, yeah, Hawkins was home, but I guess it was more the people than anything else. No reason to go back there now," he offered, casual enough about it despite the underlying emotion of the whole thing. He knew Billy could understand, but he also didn't want to drag the mood down harder, so he shrugged. "If you called it on the 'city boy' part, then I guess you were right. Not sure I really fit in, but I like it and I bet you will, too."     It wasn't the beaches of California, but New York had an energy that Hawkins could never hope to even imitate, so he could imagine Billy thriving in a place like it. That was up to Billy, what he wanted to do after he got settled in this new world and time, but for the time being? Yeah, it was a 'we' and hopefully Billy reined in some of that assholery for a little while.     "Yeah, well, literally everyone else is going to notice it, and I might need a hazmat suit to clean the shower when you're done," he shot back, hitting the button for the electric windows and wincing internally when he realized that Billy had gone for the crank for the window that didn't exist. Billy obviously put it together for himself, so Steve didn't bother mentioning it and they drove in relatively companionable silence for a little while.     Steve's mind was on the future, on what they'd be doing about Billy, about talking to him about SHIELD and an identity and all, which he wasn't expecting Billy to love; the other guy had never seemed to do well with authority, and SHIELD was basically The Authority on weird shit. Steve had learned from figuring it out on his own and from Maria, but now it fell on him to try to do the same, and he wasn't sure how well-equipped he was. "Uh, well. The music is definitely different, you're gonna have to dig through a lot of it to figure out what you're into, but the stuff we knew is still around. Technology is huge, but not in like, the flying cars kind of way. There are mini computers that people carry around in their pockets that work like phones, but do everything computers do, too, and computers do WAY more than they did when we last knew them."     The cassettes made him laugh abruptly, glancing at the touch screen radio and then back to the road. "They're super out of date, dude. Sounds like discs came after them, and you can still get those, but most music is digital now, which means you collect it from the computer and put it on the little hand-held computer phones or on a different calculator sized thing that is made for music. Like, a walkman, sorta. I'll show you stuff, don't worry. Oh, vinyl is apparently still around, but it's weird and expensive, even for new stuff."

[starsinshadows]

Steve Harrington

⭐ 

[starsinshadows]

firelightfables​:

Back at the Byers house he’d seen a glint of it; King Steve, cocksure and half shit, half honey. Smooth talking his way through situations before pulling out a punch that had left a cut on his brow. It had been a fucking sight to behold, and it was here now. A small, tiny nugget of it in the curl of Steve’s lip and flick of narrowed eyes. It was infuriatingly intoxicating, and there was a bubble in Billy’s stomach as he watched it flicker through then disappear behind a blood red snarl of anger.

There was no denying, however, that Steve was indeed caught and caught good. And for a long moment Billy let the silence linger as if to make that point. “Aw, Harrington, you kiss your mother with that mouth?” A tsk escaped him, smirk reaching his eyes. “Know you’ve got better come backs than that.”

But he wasn’t here to trade barbs or twist a knife even, even if he couldn’t help giving Steve’s face a once over. Eyes immediately clocking the way Steve was holding himself rigid, the blood beading on his lip. “The fridge. At the Byers house.”

And he gave that a moment to sink in, to really, truly sink in. Because as stupid as the statement sounded, he was serious. Something fucked was going on at the Byers; between the missing kid, the fact his sister was gone half the time with that Byers kid, and how he’d literally seen some shit in that fridge when he’d woken to an empty house. He knew what he saw, and he wasn’t going to shut up about it until he got answers.

“Why the fuck is there an alien in the Byers’ fridge?”

     For all of Billy's talk of 'King Steve' and what he thought of it, what he saw in Steve, Steve himself really didn't have a good goddamn clue what the hell he was really talking about or looking for. Obviously, he knew what Hargrove was referencing, because yeah, that had been him once. Keg King of Hawkins High, popular jock asshole that always had a date, always had people around him and was still utterly alone when it came down to it. Steve didn't know what it was that Billy thought he saw sometimes and attributed to that 'King Steve' persona he was so desperately looking for, but he also didn't care. Right then, he was mad, and that near-snarl didn't fade out when Billy mentioned his mother - he wasn't willing to give him anything to work with, and the fact that he didn't remember the last time he'd kissed his mom didn't need to hit him right then when he was already lonely and sore. Come backs had nothing to do with it, he just felt like shit and he didn't want to deal with more of Billy's shit. The fridge at the Byers' house shut off him snapping back at Billy, because he remembered what had been in it - he'd put it there himself at Dustin's insane insistence, some shit about science and having to preserve the body. He was almost positive government agents had come and scrubbed any evidence of it away, but Billy had somehow seen it. There was a fresh NDA in Steve's thoughts, as well, and a new big check in a bank account for when he graduated telling him to keep his mouth shut. Not that he really wanted to talk to Billy fucking Hargrove about aliens, anyway. So instead, he cracked a smile, actually laughed a little as he leaned back into his car a bit. It wasn't comfortable because his ribs ached both with the laugh and the lean, but standing hurt, too. His tylenol was wearing off, not that it did much at this point, anyway, so he really was leaning on that old cocksure attitude for this one. "I don't know what the fuck you're talking about, Hargrove. I got asked to babysit cause they had an emergency with the younger Byers kid and I didn't look in their fridge, but pretty sure people don't keep aliens in them. Guess you'll have to ask Byers instead." It was kind of shitty to possibly pass this on to Jonathan, but Steve wasn't feeling particularly charitable about that one. He'd gotten his ass kicked by this asshole, he had the concussion to prove it and didn't want a second round of it, and he could be as understanding about breaking up with Nancy and her getting with Jonathan as possible, but it was still fresh and sore. More than anything, he was tired and wanted to go home.