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This just in: Holster is canonically Chronically Online

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see I just know that jack had to go through psych evals as part of the fallout of the overdose which 100% meant he sat down in a chair and a professional looked at him and went "hmm. Autism." and then jack just never thought about it again

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the check please renaissance is now immortalized in my google drive. enjoy because i sure didn’t

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i have been thinking about ransom & holster coaching a little league hockey team for the past 24 hours my brain is so rotted

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we all agree that jack would have been a theatre kid if he had the opportunity right?

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Holster keeps saying “we could make a play outta that” because he keeps almost saying “we should add that to the choreo”

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interlude: moon river

“a dream maker / my heartbreaker / wherever you’re going…i’m going that way.”

—

It’s summer. Jack has a Stanley Cup and the person he’s going to be with for as long as the universe will let him is upstairs, inside, sleeping in Jack’s childhood bed. Jack is sitting on the porch swing, an unsmoked blunt still zipped up in a bag next to him. He had planned to come out here and relive his teenage years, billowing smoke and relaxing while is parents were outside. Something strangely close to pride has risen in his chest when he realized he was already calm. He already had two feet on the ground and a sweatshirt that still smelled like Georgia.

The patio door slides open, and Jack looks up to see his Mom and Dad creeping up to him. He smiles, holding up the bag the blunt was in. “Unsmoked, don’t worry.” His dad laughs.

When Jack was sixteen, his dad had slammed open the door to his room, flipping over Jack’s mattress and tearing off pillowcases and opening vents and screaming, as loud as he can, “You failed the drug test, Jack!” Jack hears it for years after.

“I’m only suspended for one game,” Jack had said. He wanted to add, “There’ll be plenty more.” But something about those words made everything much sadder.

Now, the porch swing creaks under the weight of the Zimmermann family. Jack closes his eyes and feels the cool breeze of his province in the summer wash over his face. He remembers being six or seven and breaking the swing. His mother had just pulled his convulsing body into hers, held him tightly and told him it was going to be okay. Tells him to stop apologizing and Jack didn’t know it, then, but everyone is always going to be telling him that. For a long time after, Jack thinks about that day and wonders if Alicia had known, then, that her son was too soft for a world with so many sharp edges. Now, his mom points to the sky, smiling. “Little Dipper.” She says, and Bob laughs.

It’s Jack’s old nickname. Jack feels his smile growing. “The bear,” Jack replies, crossing his finger with his mom’s to point at the constellation he’s talking about. His dad grabs both of their hands out of the sky, kissing the skin of Alicia’s and blowing raspberries into Jack’s. Jack laughs, cutting through the quiet of the yard.

When he was twelve, his Dad has just – been gone when came home from summer camp. “Your dad and I needed space,” Alicia had said. They never talk about it again after that. Jack learned, then, that the things that his parents don’t say, their silence, the words that seem to fall between the walls of their room and Jack’s – they can hurt just as much as the things they do say. Jack only sees his father on TV for two months, and when he moves back in, Jack cries into his shirt for an hour. They don’t talk about it. They still haven’t.

When you’re twelve, Jack knows, people stop existing when you stop seeing them. For years after, every time Jack sees his father, he feels like he’s looking at a ghost. They don’t talk about it.

Now, Jack rests his arm on his Dad’s shoulders, and his head on top of it, his Mom doing the same thing on Bob’s other side. He thinks, the same way he always does, that his parents are his best friends. They cheer the loudest at his games and both call him three times a week. They have a groupchat where Alicia sends pictures of Bob in the seventies, his belt tight and pants flared. Jack replies, “Which member of the Brady Bunch is this?” and Alicia sends a 15 second video of her laughing her mascara off. They have a standing appointment to watch documentaries together on Facetime every other Thursday morning, after Jack finishes his run. Jack loves them enough to melt all the tigers in the world to butter.

When he’s sixteen, they’re supposed to drive up after the game and take him home for the weekend. Jack waits outside the hotel the rest of the team is sleeping in until two in the morning. He remembers getting he text, “Sorry, Jackie.” He remembers the sound his phone had made when he slammed it against the concrete. The way his hair had ruffled when he ran his hand through it and cried, his whole body shaking. He remembers feeling so, so, small, memories of being the last kid picked up from the party, and from school, and from practice.

He remembers the way Kent had looked in the doorway of his hotel room, eyes soft like he had known all along they were never coming. He doesn’t say anything. The two of them, they never learn. The next morning, Jack calls his parents and says, “I need a new phone.” Neither of them had asked why.

It’s a long moment before Jack realizes his parents are talking, laughing and leaning into each other. Jack wants him and Bitty to be everything and nothing like them. He wants kids and he wants to take them to Disney World, like his parents did. He wants to listen when the child tells him all the noise is too much, like his parents didn’t.

“How is being an old man, Jackie?” Alicia asks from the other side of the swing. Jack can hear the cicadas in the yard.

“I’ve always been an old man,” Jack replies, and both his parents laugh. “But I guess it’s okay.” Not as bad as I thought it would be, he almost adds, but decides against it.

Growing up, Jack’s learned, is about realizing everyone who hurt you is a person. His parents broke his heart but he broke theirs, too, so there’s nothing left to do but forgive each other. Healing isn’t as easy as people make it seem, but it’s easier than silence, easier than smashed cell phones, easier than the sound of a body hitting the tile of the bathroom floor.

When he’s eighteen, Jack is in all white and tells them it was an accident. The way relief had flooded their eyes. For some things, he’ll always be sorry.

Alicia reaches over and squeezes his hand, keeping it latched onto hers even after Jack has stopped shaking. They still don’t talk as much as they’re supposed to, but Jack’s starting to think that’s because some things are too big for words.

His mom hums Moon River and his Dad smiles at the sky. “Big dipper.” The older man says without pointing.

It’s summer. Some things are too big for words.

—

“we’re all chasing after our end / chasing after our ends / life’s just around the bend, my friend / moon river and me.”

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Just a few of the nurseydex tweets I’ve seen

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check, please! + the onion headlines

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Derek Malik Nurse is a junior.

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Jack Zimmermann, Stanley Cup Champion (six months after coming out by kissing his boyfriend on national television) warming up at the new year’s Winter Classic.

(watercolor, gouache, colored pencil) (Inspired by these gorgeous photos of the 2014 Winter Classic)

My other Check Please stuff

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hey what’s up nerds it’s ADHD!bitty headcanon time because imho there aren’t enough out there and i enjoy thinly veiled headcanons that are actually just me projecting

• he’s super reluctant to take meds at first, because he thinks he should just try harder. its until his sophomore year of high school that he finally agrees and even then he only finds one that works in his senior year

• he’s afraid to tell the team he takes meds, because he knows they probably won’t do anything but even if it isn’t adderall, the kind he takes is pretty much the same and some of his friends in high school stole some for a party and bitty is terrified that it will happen again. not on purpose of course but things happen when a bunch of frat boys get drunk

• studying is the worst for him. maybe it’s cliche, but bitty struggles with studying like nothing else even with meds. he’s tried a lot of study methods and his mom even took him to a cognitive behavior study therapist once but he never does as well as when he crams it into his head like five minutes before an exam

• baking is his Thing. he hyperfixates on it from a young age and it’s one of the only things he can focus on for extended amounts of time and remember almost everything about. Beyoncé is another and so is figure skating

• bits loves even just watching hockey because there’s so much going on and it’s so fast paced and nonstop that he doesn’t get bored or distracted. playing it is even better, because being hyperaware is beneficial on the ice

• he’s suuuuuper sensitive to stimuli. on his bad days, anything but old, quiet music from his childhood and one of his dad’s college t-shirts and senor bun is too much for him to handle

• jack gets this. when bitty stays with him, jack makes sure to do whatever he can to help bitty out even if means he won’t get any conversation out of him that day.

• bitty is super tactile though. touching other people grounds him but because of the bullying he doesn’t let anyone he doesn’t trust absolutely to touch him. the smh, who he trusts so much, is sometimes not up to par and it takes jack so, so long to earn that trust. it isn’t a personal thing. bitty is just afraid to give anyone that power over him anymore

• lbr bits has anxiety too but that’s a whole other post. his anxiety and his ADHD combine in the worst way sometimes when they’re both really bad and holy shit the fall out. it’s impossible to explain but an extended anxiety attack combined with really really bad ADHD is one of the worst feelings in the world

• tl;dr: bitty has ADHD thanks

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Please tell me I'm not the only one who's horrified by how homophobic and invalidating of genuine concerns LGBTQ people have that the Check Please fandom is being today. What is this "If you're scared to come out as LGBT you're a bad person" nonsense?!

i think there’s a lot of fingers being pointed, and a lot of mud being slung, and everyone needs to take a giant step back.

as i have said repeatedly on this blog, coming out is never black and white. it is always muddled, and always nebulous, and always just one thread in a much larger web. it is impossible for some. it’s easy for others. it is something that straight people just don’t have any idea about, no matter how hard you try to explain it to them.

there are ways for a coming out to start badly, and end well. that can take time. there are also ways for the reverse to happen - we may feel awesome and great while it’s happening, and then our plans get a little derailed. sometimes, it isn’t planned at all. sometimes, it’s just a far off aspiration - one that some of us will never get the chance to realise, for our own circumstances and safety.

straight people make being gay hard. society makes it painful sometimes, and dangerous at others, and downright terrifying for the most vulnerable of us. it’s because of this that i read things like check, please!

it’s insensitive to dismiss the very real concerns people have about coming out, and their fear for the potential consequences and repercussions in the next narrative arc in the comic. it’s also insensitive to say to an LGBT+ person that they are ignoring homophobia, or that they are being insensitive themselves, for celebrating a fictional character taking a chance.

there are people who are uncomfortable with the most recent update. that’s understandable. i would be highly dismissive of anyone that suggested someone was cowardly for being anxious about coming out. i’d be disgusted by anyone that said an LGBT+ person was wrong for being afraid, or that they owe coming out to others. but i also think guilt-tripping and criticising those of us who are celebrating is in poor taste at the least.

check, please! has always been positioned as a story of ideals: it shows us that though homophobia may exist and we may struggle, we can come through and be triumphant. it’s not realistic. it never promised to be. it just takes relatable characters - characters like bitty - and gives them what they deserve. it’s a romcom. it’s a modern-day fairytale. it’s a story about hope. it takes the “if” out of “wouldn’t it be nice.”

anyone who is nervous about where the story is going, or who was made anxious by the last update, has the utmost of my empathy. i ache constantly for what the world has done to our community and the damage it has done to us. i have no time for straight people, or even other LGBT+ people, who think coming out is mandatory or simple for any of us. so yes, i am horrified by the attitudes of some. no one has any place to tell another person how or when to come out.

but i refuse to feel guilty about celebrating the way check, please! is going. it’s the gay romance i’ve always wanted: the couple runs into each others’ arms, and they prove their love to the world, and they take complications head on together. it’s impossible, sure, but i just don’t get why we’re not allowed to dream about it.

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things for you, and for me

santa’s on his way, he’s filled his sleigh with things - things for you, and for me. it’s that time of year when the world falls in love

- the christmas waltz, frank sinatra

a holiday milestone fic, for the prompt “i got you for secret santa so i got you this really expensive but sentimental gift that you’ve always wanted, hoping you’ll never find out it’s from me - and that i’ve been in love with you 1234567 years”

jack/bitty 1.8k

❄️  milestone holiday prompts ❄️

Seeing the presents under the tree, a modest pile of mid-sized boxes, all wrapped identically – by one of Lardo’s art friends, an impartial party selected to eliminate the giveaway of preschooler wrapping skills – Bitty goes over all cold from head to toe. Lardo’s friend, on seeing the gift Bitty had brought them to be wrapped, had reacted with a startled “oh!” and comically raised eyebrows. Now, with the visual comparison between the gifts his teammates had selected for each other, and the one he had gotten for his own Secret Santa, the shock seems apt.

Bitty’s gift is, firstly, large. It comes in two parts. And it’s definitely not an in-joke or an NHL beanie or a gift card.

Keep reading

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Truly, let Bun and Couch never meet.