not really an AU suggestion bc sad to say it could def happen

Jack Zimmermann goes with his parents to the Met Gala and he wears a plain black suit

He meets Bitty after Bitty spends three hours complaining about his outfit on Twitter

this is short but! yeah :)

Eric Bittle (@omgcheckplease) - 30 sec ago Someone PLEASE tell @jlzimmermann a black suit is not the #metgala outfit we deserve from him

Eric Bittle (@omgcheckplease) - 25 sec ago That boy’s ass is doing ALL the heavy lifting and you all know it

“Bitty,” Ransom says. Bitty dodges his attempts to take away his phone, still typing furiously. “Dude. You gotta cool it.”

Bitty sends off the last tweet almost angrily, waving his hands at the TV. “Justin Oluransi I consider you to be, beside myself, the best dresser in SMH history—”

“I resent that,” Holster says mildly. Bitty pauses to shoot him a beautifully disdainful look that’s totally wasted on the fact that Holster’s preoccupied with wiping Cheeto-covered fingers on the couch. Another reason they should light the thing on fire.

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Mothers’ Weekend

Somewhere, deep in her heart, Alicia Zimmermann knows she is a bad mother.

It started out as a worry, as maybe it does for all new mothers, that she will be a bad mother. That she won’t know what to do with a baby or a toddler that one day she will accidentally drop him or forget to feed him or feed him something he is actually allergic to or maybe she’ll scar him emotionally somehow and she worried but she survived his childhood okay. And then, after he was five or six, she stopped worrying about it. She thought she was doing pretty good. Jack had hockey and loved hockey and, sure, they didn’t have deep emotional talks but she didn’t exactly have any basis of comparison. Television families told her she was doing okay. No teenage boy wanted to have deep talks with his mother. And, look, if Jack didn’t talk to her all that much as he turned 12 and then 13, at least he was still talking to his father. Mostly still about hockey but she… she thought that had counted. Hockey was like French, to her. Another language she could understand but couldn’t quite speak. But Bob could. He was on top of it. Jack was taken care of.

She loved Jack. That was never the problem. The problem was that her love wasn’t enough. It didn’t matter. It didn’t alert her to any of the facts and maybe it even blinded her– She loved her son and her son loved hockey and so she loved hockey too. She loved her son and then her son seemed to love a boy named Kent and they never talked about it but she let Kent come over all the time and she figured they would discuss it at some point. She just… assumed everything was okay. Even after he was diagnosed with the anxiety disorder and given pills. It was always… well, that was a little problem but it’s handled and under control and everything is okay now.

See. Bad mother.

A good mother would have known somehow.

A good mother would have pushed and prodded or sensed it without even having to be told.

A good mother would have paid attention to how hard Jack was on himself. A good mother would have made sure her son had interests outside of hockey. A good mother would have known that Jack’s long silences after losses weren’t normal. A good mother would have preached balance and fostered friendships with different types of people and stopped the fucking hockey.

She didn’t though. Stop the hockey. No, not Alicia Zimmermann. She encouraged it. She went to the games and cheered the loudest and she even loved it a little bit because she thought it brought him joy, like his father. She bought into the vision: Jack playing hockey like Bob, the Zimmermann legacy continued throughout the ages…

God, she even used to tease Jack about how it took his father three years to win a Cup and she was sure Jack could manage it faster than his old man.

A good mother wouldn’t have done that. So, see, she’s always been a bad mother. Even now, now that she’s almost lost him, now that she’s promised to do better, now that she’s finally read all the books and online articles about anxiety and pressure and the danger of sports and hockey culture… now she’s still just as bad. Just for different reasons.

Now she is a bad mother because it’s Saturday afternoon and he’s been at Samwell for almost three months and she does not feel like mothers are supposed to feel in this moment.

She glances around. At the sea of other mothers and fathers crammed onto Samwell’s campus for Parents’ Weekend. They are not nervous. They are excited. Happy. Enthusiastic. Overjoyed to see the teenager they had left just a couple months ago again. To her right is a father almost (but not quite) breaking into a run to give his son a hug. To her left, a mother has burst into tears. Happy tears.

And then there’s her. She’s not excited to see Jack. Well, no. No, it’s not that she’s not excited. She is. She is. (She is. She repeats it once more just to remind herself). She is just…

She is nervous too. More nervous than she is excited.

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When I can’t think of anything to draw, I go through old doodles and re-do them. They don’t always turn out well, but I’m glad this one did. 

Good Jacques™ Lives! I uhhhhh was just thinking about this Man. Idk. I imagined a brief post-game locker-room interview (maybe a year or two after his first cup) that Bitty (and a good portion of omgcp-universe hockey tumblr at large) considers a gift from the heavens.

My other Check Please stuff My Not-Check Please Stuff

let’s talk about the bitty&ford captain&manager dynamic. i’ll start

how do i personally get in contact with bitty to tell him i love him

Tadpoles & Frogs Inktobers!!

Check, Please!

George is either recounting something one of the Falcs did or chirping Jack about his shoes. Jack & George, run buds.

For @zombizombi​

I was only gonna do one tonight, and somehow my little drabble idea turned into over 2k of bloody fic so I’m posting it this way so I can use a mobile-friendly cut.  And of course I picked this first cos this is my jam. (side note this is written in English grammar, not sign grammar)

Deaf!Jack, CODA!Bitty

The perks of working the juice bar was the whole getting to use the fanciest gym Bitty had ever seen in his life.  Like the sort of machines that looked like they belonged in some futuristic sci-fi show or something.  And maybe he was plagued with the feeling of Not Belonging, because really he was a minimum-wage working juice bar employee finishing grad school on so many student loans he wanted to cry, and these were all the Boston Elite or whatever…but he wasn’t going to complain.  Plus with the sweet Ivy Park yoga outfits Lardo had gotten him for his birthday, he could blend.

Mostly.

I mean, apart from how most of them had seen him work the juice bar.

He knew all their orders too, which was what he called them all in his head when he headed in for his evening run.  There was Extra Chia—the guy with the impressive beard and the wedding ring hung round his neck.  There was Two Shots of Wheatgrass—the guy with the intense lashes that looked like he was wearing eyeliner, and Bitty wasn’t really sure whether he was or not.

And then there was the blue-eyed guy.  He worked out alone, and Bitty didn’t want to say he was rude, because his momma raised him better than that, but there was a sort of etiquette that Bitty figured even rich people should adhere to.  Like taking your earbuds out when you came to order juice instead of shoving an orange post-it in his face with the order scribbled in terrible hand-writing.

Anyway, he was Extra Protein guy.  A banana and peach guy with an extra scoop of peanut butter protein and Bitty couldn’t imagine that tasted any good at all, but it wasn’t his job to judge.  Plus from the size of the guy’s delts, the protein was working out pretty damn well.

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Welllll I got enough asks/comments asking for a part two to this, so here you go. 2K words of fluff and smooches on Jack and Bitty’s first date.  (yet again another thank you to @zombizombi for the original prompt xx)

*** 

“Stop it this instant, Eric Bittle,” he chided himself, forcing his hand to the counter to set the comb down. His voice echoed in the locker room, and he was suddenly grateful no one was round to watch him talk to himself like that. But he was all nerves. The cute guy he’d been oogling from afar had turned out to be not a jerk, and also into him. Which was kind of a huge get for Bitty and his year and a half dry spell without even a single phone number.

He breathed in, breathed out, picked up his phone with shaky hands and stared at the short string of texts.

Any ideas for dinner? I trust you.

That’s brave of you, Mr Zimmermann. But you did the inviting, I think you should choose.

I do know a place, but it’s not conventional. You can tell me if you think it’s any good. Your smoothies are the best I’ve ever had, so your taste seems spot-on.

Charmer.

I’m trying.

Lord.

Jack, actually.

Your dad puns are something special, Jack. So where is this place, and what’s unconventional?

Well…it’s a food truck. And it does mean maybe taking the food back to mine. Having a little picnic in my living room. No funny business or ‘knee stuff’, I promise.

Lord have mercy, are we ever going to move past that?

Probably not. But that’s not your fault, it’s Shitty’s.

Right. Shitty. I…okay. Okay, Mr Zimmermann, if you trust me, I trust you. See you soon?

I’m already getting ready. I can’t wait.

Lord. This boy.

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The Pilgrim (Part 1)

This is the first half of a Zimbits soulmate AU, where you can feel the pull of your soulmate like a compass. This is a first draft, so no corrections have been made so far. I just wanted to throw it out there. There will be a second and final part to this- and I’ll do my best to write it soon. 

Dear Mama and Coach,

I’m sorry to leave with only a note, but this is something I have to do. I left for my pilgrimage. I know I’m way too young, but I couldn’t wait. … I think my soulmate is dying. I felt the pull stop for a full minute. It never happened before. I can’t wait another four years before seeking them! I hope you understand.

Also, I didn’t tell y’all because… I think my soulmate may be a man.

I hope you’re not too mad at me. I’ll call.

I love you both,

– Dicky

North. The pull had always pointed North. Sometimes, when Eric changed cities, he tried to triangulate the feel, but there was never enough difference in what he felt to pinpoint a precise location on a map. His soulmate could be in any of the states above Georgia, or- well, they could live further North. He wondered what would be worse for his parents, that his soulmate was a man, or that he was a Yankee.

He’d stressed about it for years but, now that he was stuck on a bus for who knew how long, he couldn’t stop worrying. He fidgeted with the cheap pilgrimage kit he’d bought at Atlanta. A map of the United States, a plastic ruler, a tiny pencil and a miserable looking compass that didn’t seem to point in the same direction if he shook it a bit. It was all he could afford, since the bus ticket from Madison to Atlanta, then Atlanta to… wherever, took most of his “borrowed” money.

That was another thing. His parents would be so mad when they noticed he took from his savings account. That money was supposed to go to his skating class- or more recently, his hockey equipment.

Maybe he could have asked. Maybe they’d understood, and offered more, and Coach would have lent him his own brass compass, the one inherited from his own father, the one he used to follow the pull until he found his own soulmate. Maybe his mother would have kissed him on the forehead and maybe she’d have offered to ride with him wherever the pull led him- North, North, always North…

But maybe not.

It wasn’t something Eric wanted to risk. The steadiness of the pull had stopped, for just a minute, maybe more, but that was enough to change Eric’s own life. He had someone, somewhere, whose soul was compatible with his- who was maybe a lover, a friend- and that someone’s life had blinked.

He held back his nervous tears, fidgeted with the compass once more.

(more under the cut)

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PART TWO IS HERE

(there will be a part 3. I apologise for cutting it yet again, but this slipped away from me. Once again, I haven’t made corrections to this story yet.)

The train was much more comfortable than the buses were. The seats facing him were free, as was the one to his left. He could stretch and nap to his leisure. His mother had sent him several hotel addressed in New York, so he could rest “In a real bed, dear lord, Dicky, you’ll be coming back to us as a pretzel!” Even though the thought of a mattress was appealing, he couldn’t stop, not when he finally knew where he was headed.

The ticket to Montréal was a little bit more expensive, but the Wifi alone was worth the call to his parents. He surfed the web and found a page about people like him, pilgrims who had to start earlier for different reasons. Also people who had waited, waited and waited all their lives… Some never did the pilgrimage. Some made it to discover their soulmate didn’t want to know them.

A horrible fear caught his heart in its icy claws. He’d assumed his soulmate was around his own age, maybe younger, maybe a little bit older- but never more than eighteen. He’d have come on his own. Eric would have felt him approach, would have ran to meet him, would have welcomed him with open arms- But what if. What if he was more than eighteen and just… never came. Didn’t find the existence of Eric worth the trouble.

‘You can’t think like that,’ he muttered to himself. ‘You know something horrible happened. You gotta have faith.’

(more under the cut)

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PART 3

(there will be a part 4/epilogue. once again, this is fresh off the google doc, no editing, no beta.)

Jack smiled back, but before he could add anything, the nurse caught up to them.

‘Young man, you can’t bother our residents. Please follow me-’

Jack instantly grabbed Eric’s hand and held on for dear life.

‘No- Please! Don’t kick him out! I want- I want to know who he is!’

The nurse stared at Jack for a moment, frowning, then ended up nodding.

‘I will allow this, Jack, but I will have to notify your parents.’

‘Ah, d’accord.’

‘And both of you will have to come inside.’

At Jack’s nod, she opened the way. Jack looked at Eric, who squeezed his hand with a reassuring smile. Jack still looked struck by Eric’s presence.

(more under the cut)

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PART 4

(This is the last part, thus completing the story! Once again, not corrected or edited. I have little time in my life for this, and honestly I do enough editing on my novels. If there’s anyone who’d like to beta this story before I post it on AO3, I would be grateful)

Jack’s parents were DELIGHTFUL. It took no time at all for them to basically adopt Eric. For his part, Eric was a little bit starstruck by Alicia (she was so pretty- and Jack said she’d been a model!) and overwhelmed by Bob, but Jack said it was a normal reaction. His dad was naturally overwhelming.

To avoid adding a burden to the kitchen staff, the Zimmemanns invited both Jack and Eric to a cute dinner in the town ten minutes away from the lake. Jack was nervous at first, because he hadn’t left the center since his admission, but Eric told him that if he could make the sacrifice of wearing the same hoodie since Georgia, he could very well put on some jeans and a t-shirt.

The whole evening was pleasant. The food, of course, was delicious, but Eric had completely changed his opinion on what constituted good food. After the horrors he’d been forced to ingest during the trip, the simple pasta bolognese tasted simply divine.

Jack let him taste a bit of his pâté chinois (‘You can’t fool me, Jack, that’s shepherd’s pie.’) and Bob asked for a familial poutine when he learned that Eric had never heard of it before.

‘I have to admit, for fries, cheese curds and gravy, this is simply amazing,’ he said after inhaling his part. Bob took care of the other half and Jack, to his parent’s visible surprise, finished both his plate and a healthy portion of poutine. Alicia seemed to be holding back tears.

After learning everything there was to learn about Eric, the Zimmerman parents broached a delicate subject.

‘What are you doing from now on, son?’ asked Bob.

‘I- I haven’t thought that far, to be honest,’ said Eric.

(more under the cut)

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I’m calling it now the Falconers are absolutely gonna go to Bittys graduation. Bittys name is gonna be called and no less than 10 Hockey players, both NHL and ex SMH members, are gonna be screaming, and the glass of the ten nearest buildings are gonna shatter.

Tater cries and say “that’s my son” and like 15 people nearby congratulate him and Jack has to explain to all of these people that Bitty isn’t actually his son.

Bitty’s Fanclub

Based on these tweets:

3/18/2015 12:53:40  That moment when a massive football player corners you in the dining hall to tell you good luck on the playoffs “you guys are champs” 3/18/2015 12:55:45  file under: things 7th grade Eric Bittle would not expect to happen

It is my firm belief that a good number of the Samwell Football Team has a crush on Bitty.  When inevitably a new player falls for our favoritie #15, he has to take a picture with another teammate holding bunny ears behind his head.  

Later in the hockey season when football is over, there is an entire section that is informally reserved for the football players who come to every home game.

Because seriously, the more I think about, I’m even more convinced.

This football player cornered Bitty to congratulate him - Bitty who was complaining that people still don’t realize he plays hockey.

This player knows who Bitty is. Knows that Bitty is a starting player. And as much as we can tell from a tweet, is fanboying all over Bitty.

This is so deliberate!

A bunch of the football players go running regularly. One day in spring, they decide to change up their usual route, and the new one takes them past the Haus. Holster and Bitty are out on the lawn, tossing a beat-up football back and forth, and just as the football players draw up to them Bitty throws an absolute beaut of a pass, just the right amount of spin on it; it soars way past Holster (who’s too busy shouting hot nonsense about how Bitty is full witchcraft to try and catch it anyway). Luckily, one of the football guys (let’s call it the Quarterback cuz lol that’s the only one I know) catches the ball out of sheer reflex, though. Realising what he just saw, he stops dead in the middle of the street, struggling not to let his jaw hit the floor or his dick – well. And Bitty’s just there, in his tiny fucking shorts and a tank top that really covers almost nothing, laughing and chirping and apologising for his massive oaf of a D-man, and that’s how Samwell’s Quarterback falls head over heels in love with Eric R. Bittle. Except he’d never *say* anything because that Zimmermann guy is a scary motherfucker, watching the whole thing from a deck chair, glaring at QB (let’s call him TJ) so hard that TJ’s surprised he hasn’t caught fire yet.

This becomes so much better when you remember Jack was the one to chase the football team out of the Haus with a fire extinguisher at the previous year’s epikegster and if TJ is the starting QB, he was definitely a part of the team last year.

I know this has been done already but I just had to get this out!!

X