The eagerly awaited part 2 of the DILF!Steve concert saga is here!! Part 1, in case you missed it.
"You're not going."
"Come on! I haven't thrown up in an hour!"
"The drive to the venue is an hour and a half."
"Steve-"
"And if you throw up in my car-"
"Oh my God-"
"I'll kill you."
Steve doesn't need to see Dustin's eye roll in order to feel the full force of it through the phone.
"I'll just kill you. You'll have a headstone within the week that says Here Lies Dustin Henderson: Rightfully Murdered for Puking in Steve Harrington's Car," he continues as he packs Capri-Suns into the cooler for the car ride.
He doesn't remember ever being that thirsty as a kid, but if Anna wants strawberry kiwi, Anna gets strawberry kiwi. It helps that it's Steve's favorite flavor, too.
"I'd need a big ass headstone to fit all of that," Dustin snaps.
"Your big-ass ego would demand no less, shithead," Steve shoots back.
"Swear jar, Daddy!" Anna calls from her room, across the house because while she doesn't listen to Steve when he's right in front of her, she can hear him break the swear jar rule from halfway across the world.
He zips up the cooler, fishes a quarter out of his pocket, and throws it into the half-full soup can next to the stove.
(A quarter doesn't mean much, but Anna doesn't know that. The day Steve teaches that kid about inflation is the day his pockets become permanently empty.)
"Did she just swear jar you?" Dustin asks from over the phone.
"You baited me into it."
"I did no such thing."
Steve rolls his eyes. "You're not coming, though, are you?"
Dustin sighs, and, for all his teasing, Steve does genuinely feel bad. "I still feel like if I breathe wrong, I'll hurl, so, no. I don't think I'll manage the car ride, nevermind the actual show."
"Sorry dude."
"Don't be. Some dickhead will live stream the whole thing on Instagram, anyway. I'll live vicariously through them."
Steve snorts and picks up the cooler. He got Anna dressed beforehand, so it's just a matter of getting her to stop playing with whatever toy she dug up - Play-Doh has been the fixation of the week - in her room so they can go.
"Besides," Dustin continues, and Steve hates where this is going. "Anna loved the show, and you've got a reason-"
"Nope," Steve says, knocking on Anna's door. "Don't finish that sentence."
"All I'm saying-"
"I know what you're gong to say, which means you know my answer. I don't date."
Anna opens her door. From the little Steve can see inside, there are at least three containers of Play-Doh open and strewn across the floor. He thinks her Barbies are involved in it somehow.
"Time to go," Steve says, and he thinks, Please don't let there be Play-Doh in the Barbie hair.
"Five more minutes," Anna tries.
"Nope. Clean up and roll out."
"Hi, Anna," Dustin says through the phone.
"Uncle Dusty!" Anna shrieks, and she starts jumping up and down. "Are you comin', too?"
Dustin sighs, and Steve can't tell if it's at the nickname or if he's still cursing the universe. "No, but you and your dad have a great time, okay?"
"Can you, can you tell Daddy I should get five more minutes?"
Steve raises his eyebrows at her. Anna, to her credit, ignores him wonderfully.
"If you clean up," Dustin says, because he's actually Steve's favorite person right now, "you get to do more headbanging at the concert."
Anna gasps like Steve didn't already tell her that earlier today, and she gets to work on putting her toys away. Steve helps, of course, and he finds that there is, in fact, Play-Doh in two of her Barbies' hair.
Fun. They're going to turn into Buzzcut Barbies when Anna goes to sleep because he can already tell that they are the furthest thing from salvageable.
But that doesn't matter right now. What matters is getting Anna in the car, deploying the first two of many strawberry kiwi Capri Suns from the cooler, and making the drive to the venue, which Steve does with minimal road rage and accompanied by the Disney radio station.
Success by all metrics, really.
Dinner might as well be now, so Steve shells out a truly disgusting amount of money for overpriced chicken nuggets and fries at the venue. Anna will only eat half her portion but say she's hungry later, but that's what the snacks and water Steve smuggled in via his jacket are for.
They get to their seats, dinner finished up, just as the lights go down for the first opener. Steve looks to his left, half-expecting Eddie and his friends to be there before remembering that they won't be.
He tries not to feel too disappointed. He fails miserably.
The seat next to him, however, isn't empty. There's a note taped to the back of it, one addressed to Steve and Miss Anna, so Steve feels alright taking and opening it.
At the top, there's a messily scrawled phone number. Underneath, it says:
Here's my number. Probably a bad idea to call with all the noise. Texting works, though you should do that after the show. I'll be a little busy until then.
-Eddie
Steve puts the note in his pocket, puts Anna's ear defenders on, puts his own earplugs in, and looks at the stage, where-
Hang on.
He squints at the stage, where four guys have started playing a song that, frankly, sounds too much like literally all the music Steve listened to yesterday for him to care about all that much. The drummer is pretty small, with wild, curly hair. The bassist looks familiar. The lead singer, who is very talented but not to Steve's personal taste, also looks familiar. And the guitarist-
No way. No way in hell.
It's a total coincidence. Lots of guys have long, curly hair and heavy jewelry and big eyes and are wearing formal wear, for some reason, and catch Steve's eye, and-
"Thank you for such a great welcome!" the guitarist says, and his smile totally isn't doing anything to Steve, thanks very much.
Anna stops moving, where she's standing next to Steve, and climbs up into his lap to get a better look at the stage. She looks out, then back at Steve, then out, then back at Steve, making a face as confused as Steve feels.
Some days, he thinks he ended up with a clone, not a kid.
"I'll get off the mic in a second. I only do the talking because Jeff," the guitarist points at the lead singer, who ducks his head, "is really shy."
Jeff. That name is definitely relevant, but Steve is a permanent resident of denial.
"We fought about what song we were going to include next in our set list, so much so that we didn't decide until yesterday and had to consult a tiebreaker."
Okay, maybe Steve is a less permanent resident of denial than he thought.
"So, thank you to Miss Anna, who did great at headbanging for her first time-"
Anna whips around so fast, her forehead nearly collides with Steve's jaw.
"And to Steve, who's a big fan of American Psycho."
At the song name, the crowd loses their minds, and if Anna wasn't sitting right in front of him, Steve would join them.
Because what the fuck is happening right now?
His question isn't answered. In fact, about five more questions pop up in its stead when, during the bridge of the song, Jeff puts on a clear rain jacket and picks up a prop axe.
Please, God, don't let this traumatize my kid, Steve thinks.
Anna, thankfully, doesn't get scared. When Jeff brings the axe down, again and again, Steve's weirdo daughter fucking smiles. And giggles. It's kind of cute, actually.
When the song ends, she turns back to Steve.
"That's Eddie onstage," Steve says, and saying it, somehow, makes it real.
"I thought so!" Anna says, and she turns back to watch the show. Steve puts an arm around her waist so she doesn't fall off his lap when she bangs her head to the music.
The rest of the songs, in Steve's opinion, are better than the opening song. They're more melodic, which Steve can definitely get behind, and each of them has a gimmick onstage, all based off of various horror movies. It's ridiculous, but also really, really cool.
And Eddie, onstage, because it is the same guy who flirted with him and was so sweet to Anna yesterday, is really, really hot.
Steve has never had a thing for guitarists before. He's never had a thing for musicians before. Hell, until a year ago, he didn't realize he had a thing for men.
Eddie is. Uh. Yeah. Really doing it for him.
Steve doesn't know whether it's his enthusiasm, or the way he moves, or seeing his hair tied up, or the fucking dress pants and suspenders, or just his hands, but he does know he has to get himself in check because this is an all ages show and he's here with his daughter.
He already knows he can't add these songs to his grading playlist, not when they're accompanied by visuals of Eddie playing his guitar.
Sweet Jesus.
"Alright, that's our set!" Eddie says. "Thanks, y'all, for sticking around for us, and let's give it up for the next act!"
The crowd, including Anna and Steve, cheer as they exit and the lights go up.
Steve fishes his phone out of his pocket, fully intending to add Eddie's number to his contacts, and is greeted by not one, not two, but sixteen missed calls from Dustin Henderson.
Naturally, Steve calls him back. "Who died?"
"What the fuck?" Dustin yells, and Steve just puts the phone on speaker to save the rest of his hearing. "Did Eddie fucking Munson just personally thank you from the stage?"
"Swear jar, Uncle Dusty!" Anna says.
"Sorry," Dustin says. "But Steve. Answers. Now."
"How do you even-"
"Instagram live. Is Eddie the guy you were telling me about yesterday?"
Steve takes his phone off speaker. Prior experience tells him that this conversation has a less than zero chance of staying PG, nevermind PG-13.
"Yeah," Steve says. "He is."
"The one who flirted with you, and you forgot to ask for his number."
"Well, I have it now."
"What?" Dustin shrieks, and Steve is incredibly thankful that he didn't take his earplugs out.
"He left me his number on the seat."
"Text him."
"I was going to, until I saw that you called me sixteen times."
"Jesus Christ, Eddie Munson was flirting with you."
Steve rolls his eyes and hands a pack of gummy bears to Anna when she taps his arm. "He could have just been nice. I don't even know if he's into guys."
"Have you looked at him?"
"Wow, Dustybuns, I didn't know you were homophobic."
"I think it's the complete opposite of homophobic to try to get you laid."
"Hanging up!" Steve shouts because a part of him will never see Dustin as any older than thirteen, and no thirteen year old should ever say that.
"Text-"
Steve hangs up the call. "Can I have a gummy bear?"
"No," Anna says, mouth full, in her seat, legs swinging.
"I bought them."
She shrugs. "You gave them to me. Mine now."
Steve stares. She stares right back.
He sighs and opens a new pack of gummy bears.
With his mouth full of sweet Haribo corpses, Steve takes out the note and adds Eddie to his contacts. Before he can overthink it, he sends him a message:
I guess I don't have to ask you what you do for a living. Just so we're even on that front, I'm a teacher, and Anna's full time job is preschool.
He tucks his phone back into his pocket and focuses on making this a good experience for Anna, who somehow wormed her way into a conversation with the intimidating-looking couple sitting next to her.
Because it's totally not like a literal rockstar is going to text him back. Right?
Part 3!!
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I've seen a lot of people talking about how Barbie talks about how the patriarchy affects women and how well it does that, so I wanna talk about how Barbie talks about how the patriarchy affects men and how well it does that. Because it does that really well tbh.
At the beginning of the movie, it's made very clear that the Kens are constantly competing with each other, and trying to prove their worth, their Ken-ness, to both the Barbies, and more importantly, to the other Kens. In fact, multiple times through the movie it's shown that Ken seems to find the opinions of other Kens as a motivator for him to do things. He tries to show off to Barbie only after he sees the other Kens saying hi to her. He only starts dancing with Barbie when he sees the other Kens dancing with her. He only goes with her to the Real World after another Ken accuses him of cowardice and he decides to prove him wrong. Barbie says "Ken's not cool!" and Ken responds "He is to me."
This shows so damn well what the patriarchy is like for men. Because for the Kens it's not necessarily about Barbie, it's about what other Kens think of you. Being a man you are constantly, incessantly trying so damn hard to prove to the other men around you that you are a man, the manliest man to ever man, the best Ken to ever Ken. Literally doing backflips trying to prove yourself. And this is before patriarchy is even officially introduced to the story, there's no undertone of power yet, this is just what it's like to be a man around other men. It's toxic masculinity.
And when the patriarchy is introduced, that's increased tenfold. At first it looks like they've banded together to take power, but really they're still competing with each other, they're just doing it differently. Rather than competing to see who can get Barbie to fall in love with them, they're competing to see who can be the manliest, have the manliest stuff, wear the manliest clothes, have the manliest house and decorations.
And then they literally go to war. War is considered one of the few places where it's socially accepted for men to be more emotional, form deep and personal bonds with other men, and that's exactly what happens in the movie. They go to war, and there's an entire song where they bond and learn not to fight with each other anymore.
And that I think is the message from the Kens. For men, the way the patriarchy affects them is it forces constant competition and animosity, even around people that are supposed to be your friends. It makes it impossible to express your feelings unless they're with a romantic partner, and all of this turns you into a pent up ball of emotions with nowhere to go.
Which means that the message is: In order to fix the way the patriarchy oppresses men, men need to learn how to form close bonds with people, especially other men. Because like Barbie said to Ken, he needs to discover who he is without her. Men have learned to lean on women as a crutch, using them to figure out how to Be A Person and express emotions in a healthy way, but this can very quickly turn into a woman feeling like she needs too be his mother and teach him how to do these things. And Ken was 100% doing this, or at least he was trying to throughout the movie. Ken was so desperate for Barbie to be in love with him, not necessarily because he loved her, but because he needed a person he could just exist as himself around. Because he couldn't do that with the other Kens, the only person he could be himself around was Barbie.
And what's so great about the end of the movie is that the Kens did eventually figure out how to form close bonds with each other! They went to war, argued and fought, but by the end of the song they were holding hands, kissing each other on the cheek, telling each other they were enough. Even when Ken is up in the dreamhouse, crying and saying that he looks stupid, all the other Kens start shouting back up to him, saying that he looks cool. And Ken responds by giving one of his new friends his coat, which was clearly very important to him.
What the Kens did, that's what men in the real world need to do. They need to form close bonds with other men and stop competing with each other. Hopefully not by going to war the way the Kens did, Barbie isn't a blueprint for solving the patriarchy lol.
I'd be happy to do it through a song though.
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