It just hit me that the soil turned gray from concrete dust. So many buildings have been turned to rubble that their powdered remains completely blanket the soil and muddy the sea itself to the point that it looks like a gray scale filter has been applied.
the bear would never but season 5 should have Carmy explore art since it’s been established that he can draw and have him obsess about the same piece over and over only to take a step back and realize he’s drawing Sydney the same way she inspires his dishes
I love how it's basically canon that the couples from previous seasons are just so unbothered and sickeningly in love in the background while the main couple of the season is running around screaming while everything is on fire.
Can't wait for Colin and Penelope to be spinning like ballerinas while Benedict is screaming crying and throwing up over Sophie.
It’s weird how everyone hating you when you’re nine years old still affects your self esteem when you’re 26 like yeah nobody came to my birthday party but that was like 17 years ago why is it stopping me from going to a gay bar
The human brain needs the ability to be recalibrated faster. Yeah we’ve been doing this healing process for like six or seven years now make it snappy hurry it up
if you dont want print media to die, buy physical copies of things. if you don’t want independent journalism to die, subscribe to a local newspaper. if you want more libraries and skate-parks and arcades, get a bunch of friends and call in the individual charge of your village or town or whatever and ask for one to be built and use the existing ones. if you want more native flora and fauna, start looking at the ones that already exist and how to preserve them. this is your world too. fight for it. get rid of the rot of passivity.
Getting a weird little hobby is actually so important bc it opens your eyes up to the world. You start crocheting or knitting, and how you see scarves and sweaters differently. You try identifying plants, now you’re seeing opposite and alternate leaf pattern. Bird watching? Every chirp draws attention and interest.
By popular demand, I've restocked all 16 of my The West Wing retro episode prints in my shop. Find them in 12" x 16" and 18" x 24" and thanks so much for all the kind works about the artwork in my previous post.
Quiet My Fears (With The Touch Of Your Hand) Ch. 2
Steve Harrington x f!reader
Description: You have this amazing talent of knocking the wind right out of Steve's chest with words alone.
Warnings: pregnant!reader, mentions of being sick (among other scarier pregnancy symptoms), language
Word Count: 3614
Read Chapter 1 here!
My Masterlist!
Rain slammed against the window panes of the Harrington house like bullets. The cold seeped through the walls and ate straight through Steve’s pajamas, and the cup of coffee in his hands was doing little to remedy it. There was zero hint of sun in the sky, it seemed like there would be none all day, and Steve was really regretting coming out from under his covers.
Steve had only slept in his own house three times over the past two weeks; he’d made quite the home for himself on your couch, living out of a backpack of clothes he’d stuck in the corner of your living room. You had asked him not to leave you alone, and what kind of man would he be if he had said no to that? He probably wouldn’t even have been able to, anyway.
He didn’t know if he would be allowed to sleep in your bed with you, and he had been too afraid to ask.
While his father never really bothered to care where his son was, and his mother trusted him enough to let him do his own thing most of the time, he was still expected to show his face at home every once in a while. He’d been stuck with the closing shift last night (even though it was outside of his availability, so thanks for that, Keith), and he knew you’d be fast asleep by the time he made it back to your apartment. You’d called the store after you got home at the much more reasonable hour of six thirty. ‘I think I can live with being alone for tonight’ you’d told him. ‘I’ve got a paper to write, anyway.’
Fuck, Steve really needed a better job. Preferably one that paid him more and wasn’t open until eleven p.m. on a Thursday night.
You worked a big girl job at the Roane County Historical Society museum. You were just a secretary, but you had a salary, insurance, and all that other grown up stuff. Nine to five, four days a week, and they helped with your college tuition, too. Come May, you’d have a History degree and a teaching certification, and word on the street said Hawkins Middle was about to have a need for a new History teacher. Unlike him, you had the perfect five year plan laid out right in front of you.
Y’know, as long as Steve hadn’t ruined it for you.
By the time he woke up on Friday, his father was long gone. It was nearing one in the afternoon, and the big empty house felt extra big and extra empty today. Steve glanced out the window as he poured a second cup of coffee and saw the rain collecting in the bottom of the long-since drained pool in his backyard. A handful of stray leaves sat mixed with the rainwater, some stuck in a brown mass on the bottom, some floating lazily atop the puddle.
He was startled out of his trance by his mother’s voice and nearly dropped his full mug.
“Morning, sleepyhead,” she said as she walked into the kitchen, heels clicking along the tiles. “Or, good afternoon, rather.”
Meredith Harrington was the opposite of her husband in more ways than anyone could count. She actually enjoyed spending time with her child, for one, but there had never been an angry bone in her body. She wasn’t immune to frustration, or worry, but it was never unfounded. Yet still, for every wild flame of rage that shot from her husband's mouth, she counteracted with calmness. Or, more accurately, quiet, fearful resignation. Her husband never put his hands on her or their son, but Steve could always tell that she had spent her whole marriage walking on eggshells, waiting for the terrifying moment that he did, as if it was a simple inevitability.
Steve loved his mom, but fuck, he wished she would just stand up for herself for once.
“God, Mom, you scared me,” Steve responded, leaning against the counter.
“I do live here, too, y’know,” she poked back with a smile. “When did you get so jumpy?”
If she ever found out the real answer to that question, she would probably never let her son out of her sight ever again.
“Haven’t seen much of you these last couple weeks,” his mother observed. “You alright?”
“Yeah,” he insisted. “Yeah, I’m alright.”
“Are you sure?” she asked. She put the pocketbook she was holding down on the marble countertop of the island and crossed the room to lean against it, opposite her son. “I can tell, there’s far too much going on in that big head of your’s.”
Steve snorted at the well meaning insult.
“It’s nothing mom, I promise.”
“Come on now, you know I don’t buy that,” his mother asked with arms crossed. “Talk to me, kid.”
“I-I don’t know.” Steve was absolutely, in no way, ready to talk about any of what was going through his head, especially to his mom. ‘You might be a grandma come September’ wasn’t really something he could just drop in the middle of casual conversation.
“Is it a girl, maybe?”
Steve’s quiet was proof enough that his mother was, at least partially, right. She gave her son a knowing smile.
“Tell me it’s not Nancy again, right?” she asked. Meredith was generally a pretty forgiving woman, but Nancy had really broken her son’s heart. So, while she would always show nothing but kindness to the eldest of the Wheeler children, she didn’t have to like her.
“Oh, no. Definitely not,” Steve assured. “That ship sailed a long, long time ago.”
“Good,” she replied. “Will I ever get to meet this mystery girl?”
Steve just shrugged, deciding it best to omit the fact that the “mystery girl” had lived across the street for eighteen years and swam in their pool every summer for a decade.
“You should invite her over for dinner some time,” his mother said. She leaned forward and pulled a piece of errant lint off of Steve’s shoulder with perfectly manicured nails. “I’ll roast a chicken. It’ll be nice.”
“She doesn’t eat chicken.”
“She doesn’t eat chicken?” she parroted back. “What kind of person doesn’t eat chicken?”
“She’s a vegetarian, mom,” he explained.
“Ah,” his mom accepted. “Then I’ll make that broccoli cheddar casserole you like. You know, the one I make during Lent every year? Think she’d like that?”
“Yeah, I think she would.” Steve was trying his best to hide his smile, though he wasn’t doing it all that well.
“Alrighty.” She patted her son’s shoulder as she walked past him and gathered her purse. “Well, I have to go run some errands. You’re more than welcome to join me if you’d like.”
“No, thanks.”
“Right. You’re much too cool to tag along with mom to the grocery store. How could I have forgotten?”
“No! No, it’s not that, I-”
“I’m joking, Steve,” she assured with a smile. “Make sure that cup ends up in the dishwasher, okay? Not just in the sink.”
“Dishwasher. Got it.”
“I love you! Don’t get into any trouble while I’m gone!”
With that, the heavy front door shut and Steve was plunged into the silence of deserted suburbia.
You were at work, he had the day off with no plans, and the idea of being at all productive sounded absolutely exhausting. He finished his coffee in two big gulps and decided the best way to spend the day would be to crawl right back into bed and wallow in his feelings.
Steve had, very much on purpose, kept most of his thoughts about your current situation to himself. Partially because every time you two did start talking about it, you ended up a slushy pile of tears in his arms. The other reason, though, the bigger reason, was that he was terrified that you would put all of your own wants and wishes to the side and do whatever he wanted you to. The concept of you having a baby you didn’t want just to appease him made him sick to his stomach.
His parents only got married because his mom ended up pregnant at nineteen, and having a baby out of wedlock in 1967 was a social sin of the highest order. So they planned a wedding in two weeks time (a small family affair, exclusively to save face and avoid the questions that arise with courthouse ceremonies), and moved into a big, fancy house so that everyone knew the Harringtons were a normal, run-of-the-mill, perfect American family. His father loved to point out all of the things he didn’t get to do all because Steve came along and got in the way, and his mother. . .
She loved him. He knew that. He also knew that she had to pack up her life to play house with a man she was always a little bit afraid of, all because of him. His father always resented him for it, but his mom never did. At the very least, she never told him she did.
The thought of doing to you what his father did to his mom absolutely fucking terrified him, but ‘terrified’ had been his baseline state of being pretty much constantly over the past two weeks.
Steve was no stranger to fear. He’d had extensive experience with the feeling; that sharp heaviness that settled itself behind his ribs and sucked every drop of oxygen out of his lungs. When it came at him hard and fast, that was when he could handle it best. This was not that. This fear was slow and achy, all-encompassing. It sealed itself onto his bones, like some sort of emotional slime. Like a fungus.
And, honestly, most of that fear was for you, not him. The worst thing that could happen to him was that he could end up being a shitty father, and while he would hate that more than pretty much anything in the entire world, it did sort of pale in comparison to your worst case scenario. You could die.
Yeah, maybe he was being a little bit dramatic, but you still could. It wasn’t all that far outside of the realm of possibility. You were already horribly sick, you had been for the past few weeks, and while you had been taking the constant nausea and incessant dizzy spells like a fuckin’ champ, it wasn’t like a positive attitude would be able to save you if you started hemorrhaging.
Steve really hoped, for your sake, that you had yet to go down this train of thought, but he knew you most likely had. As terrified for you as he was, he understood that you were probably feeling all of it tenfold.
And yet, behind all of that, he was having a very difficult time squashing that tiny inkling of reckless hope that had been planted in the back of his head. He was still a 22 year old dick-head who had zero business taking care of a baby, and he definitely wasn’t allowed to be excited about it. For, like, a million different reasons.
Eventually, he fell back into a heavy-limbed sleep, but was woken up however many hours later by the shrill ring of the phone. A bleary eyed glance at the clock on his bedside table told him it was just passed six o’clock. His mother should be back by now, right? He let it ring.
A moment passed, and it rang once more. He debated for a moment if he even had the right to answer it anymore, but he begrudgingly pulled himself out of bed and picked it up anyway.
“Harrington Residence,” he grumbled, hoping whoever was on the other side could tell how frustrated he was to be awake.
“Steve?” Your voice came through the line. It was strained, and he heard you trying your best to disguise the sobs coming from your throat. “It’s me.”
“Hey, woah, what’s going on? What happened?” he questioned, any annoyance gone.
“Are you able to come pick me up?” you stuttered out between sniffles. “I’m at work. I-I have a flat tire.”
“Yeah, yeah. Of course I can,” he said.
“Okay.”
“I’m on my way, alright? Five minutes, tops,” he told you. He had the earpiece of the phone tucked between his cheek and shoulder, and the cord was stretched as far as it could go to reach into his bedroom as he haphazardly swapped his flannel pajama bottoms for a pair of jeans.
“Thank you.” Another sob.
“You don’t have to thank me,” he insisted. “Hang tight, I’ll be right there.”
The rain had slowed back to a dismal drizzle that splashed into the puddles stretched across Steve’s driveway. The drive to the museum was usually short, but the evening rush (as if the barely-there Hawkins traffic could ever be called that) slowed him down just enough for it to be annoying. The museum had officially closed an hour ago, though stray patrons and evening administrative duties usually kept you back after hours.
Steve saw you shivering underneath the awning that hung over the front doors, comparable to a lost kitten stuck in a thunderstorm. The shoulders of your sweater were soaked through, and as Steve pulled into the parking lot and stopped his car, he could see the angry black rivers of runny mascara that dribbled down your face.
“What the hell are you doing waiting for me out here in the rain?” Steve asked as he jogged up to where you were standing. He removed his jacket and wrapped it around your shoulders. “Why aren’t you inside? It’s freezing.”
“That creepy research assistant is in there and I hate being in the same room as him when there’s nobody else around,” you choked out, syllables broken up by wracking sobs.
“Alec?” Steve asked, and you nodded. He pulled you tightly against him before adding, “I’ll fuckin’ kill him.”
“Please don’t do that,” you squeaked.
“Let’s change your tire, huh?” Steve said, though he made no move to let you go. “Do you have the spare?”
“That-” your words were cut off by a pitiful sniffle. “That is the spare.”
“Of course it is,” Steve sighed, though he most certainly should not have, because it just spurred on more crying from you. “Hey, it’s alright. I can take you home and we can get a new tire on it in the morning, okay?”
“I just had a really bad day,” you wept into his shoulder.
“I know, baby. It’s okay.”
“I spilled the hottest tea in the universe all over my legs,” you croaked. Steve winced at the image.
“I’m sorry,” he said into the top of your head.
“And since it was so hot, I accidentally said ‘motherfucker’ in front of a tour group that consisted exclusively of second graders!” you added. Steve would have laughed at that if you weren’t so wildly upset. “And Creepy Alec was being creepy all day long-”
“My offer still stands.”
“And then I came out here and my fucking tire was fucking flat!” you exclaimed, punctuated by another bout of wailing, the kind that made your whole body shake and your voice stutter. Steve took it the best he could, petting the back of your head and holding you tight, wishing he could go into your brain and dig all of the bad bits out.
“Let me get you home, and we can get you into some dry clothes and deal with your car in the morning, okay?”
“Okay,” you whimpered.
Steve let you go, but when he went to pull you along to his car so the pair of you could leave, you stayed planted right where you were. You lifted your watery eyes to meet his, and he gazed at you from where he stood.
“Steve?” you quietly asked him.
“Yeah?” Steve responded. A silence fell between the two of you, though the lazy rain and evening downtown traffic poked holes through it.
“I wanna keep the baby.”
You had this amazing talent of knocking the wind right out of his chest with only words alone.
“That-” came out of fucking nowhere, holy shit!, he didn’t add. “Really?”
“Yeah,” you muttered over a wobbly lip.
Steve was paralyzed. The soles of his shoes had been superglued to the pavement and his arms had been turned to stone. It was somehow both exactly what he did and did not want to hear all at the same time, because deep down in his gut he knew he wanted that too, but there was a laundry list of reasons why it was a bad idea, why it was irresponsible, why it was maybe everything he ever wanted, and-
“Steve, if you don’t want to do this, that's okay, but I need you to tell me. Now.” Your voice, shaky and full of fear and yet so, so determined, pulled him up and away from his thoughts once again.
“I do!” he exclaimed, maybe with a bit too much fervor. He regained his ability to move and closed the gap between the two of you in one wide step. “I do.”
You stood silent with your glassy eyes staring bullets into his.
“Look, I’m gonna start talking, and I don’t know if I’m going to be able to stop, so if it gets to be too much, just shut me up, okay?” Steve said. He brought his hands up to grace your shoulders.
“What?” you questioned, confusion laced throughout your miserable expression.
Steve had spent the last three and a half years doing everything he could to drown out the sounds of his feelings for you, and Robin was right. It was destroying his brain.
“I’m really, really in love with you,” he said. “And I have been for a really, really long time. Since way before this, fuck, since before Starcourt, and I’m so fucking sorry for not having the guts to say it until now. I’m the universe’s biggest coward for that-”
“You are not a coward!”
“-And I know you deserve better, but for some reason that still eludes me, you’ve stuck with me through all the bullshit, anyway. You could’ve run away whenever you wanted to, you could’ve gone with your parents when they left, but you didn’t, and that has to mean something, right?”
“Steve,” you wept.
“I promise, there is nothing in this world that I want more than to do this with you, alright? Not a single fucking thing,” he assured you. “I meant what I said. Holding your hand the whole time.”
Steve took your trembling hand into his own, fingers fitting together like lock and key.
“If you’ll have me,” he added.
Your lips wobbled, you let out another shattered sob, and you kissed him like it was the only thing keeping you alive. Like you would drop dead right on the spot if not for his lips on yours. Steve kissed back, because he knew he would drop dead if he didn’t, and now he had tears to match your own.
“I’m really, really in love with you, too,” you blubbered after the pair of you pulled apart. You had a hand on either side of his face, fingers ghosting over the junction of his jawline and neck, and Steve had his wrapped delicately around each wrist.
“You really wanna do this?” Steve asked you. “You really mean it? You’re not just saying it?”
“I really mean it,” you said definitively. You were still very much crying, though you were infinitely less miserable than you had been five minutes ago. The pair of you stayed swaying in each other's arms, protecting each other from the cold.
“Good, because I really mean it, too,” he responded.
The thick, foggy haze of emotion was beginning to dwindle, and despite the warm bubble of affection the two of you had created, you were still standing out in the rain. And Steve was pretty sure he could see Creepy Alec spying on them through one of the second story windows.
“Let’s go home. I’ll make you dinner,” Steve murmured to you, and you nodded in agreement.
Steve drove you both back to your apartment and made a feast of plain scrambled eggs and buttered toast, because it was all your stomach could really handle right now. Turns out, he very much was allowed to sleep in your bed with you, and after he’d finished doing the dishes in the sink, he joined you under the pile of blankets that adorned your mattress. Your cat curled itself up at the end of the bed as you drew yourself into his side. He didn’t remember you being this cuddly, but it was a change he was more than happy to welcome.
After a few minutes, when he’d thought you had fallen asleep, your voice pierced through the quiet of your bedroom.
“You’re gonna be someone's dad,” you muttered into his pajamas. Fuck. He was, wasn’t he?
“You’re gonna be someone’s mom,” he shot back.
“Weird,” you responded. “I think you’ll be really good at it.”
“You think so?”
“Mhm. Definitely.”
And of course Steve was still fucking terrified. Terrified of the monsters, and of his dad, and of all the different ways this could go south, but he had you tucked up against his chest, and he was gonna be someone’s dad, and he couldn’t really bring himself to care about any of the scary stuff. In this moment, for the first time in as long as Steve could really remember, the underlying current of fear that ran along his thoughts was finally overpowered by just how much he fucking adored you.
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