Another Check Please sideblog! I identify with Nursey as the most aquarius of aquarius'. Follows and likes come from my main blog @codaman15 Sorry for the shitty photoshop!!! I'm working on it!!!!
4/? of my favourite Check, Please! things: The Core Six
It’s about having each other’s backs. Because they taught me I can be strong just how I am. Exactly how I am. And I’ve learned that I can be strong for them too.
@classystaches’ first illustration was so moving, I had to commission her for a companion piece! While it won’t be in the KS print set, it’s one of the most lovely reinterpretations of Check, Please! I’ve seen!! ;-;
Please, like and follow Rachel’s art! Editors, agents, and publishers—she does YA and fantasy covers. 🎨 [Instagram | Twitter | Portfolio]
jack and bitty have a get together with their smh friends before their wedding and holster demands that he be allowed to read a toast he prepared and everyone's like yeah okay whatever let's get this over with and then he pulls up ao3 on his phone and does a dramatic reading of a jack zimmermann/eric bittle rpf coffee shop au
I don’t know if you take requests for nurseydex fics... but if you do the song “omg did she call him baby” by Beth McCarthy screams a heartbroken Nursey when Dex has a girlfriend
i like really can’t do genuine heartbreak but i CAN do angst that ends happy, so here’s my best shot :)
Nursey’s got a red Solo cup in one hand and a plastic champagne flute in the other and it’s sometime after three but before five and he is definitely not thinking about her or him or them together when he looks up between one sip and another to see the telltale blue hair reflecting the murky spotlights of the basement.
Nursey squints. He could be making things up--his brain is nice like that-- but he doesn’t think he’s imagining things. She’s got very distinctive hair, Dex’s--girlfriend. It’d been rather disappointing, actually, the blue hair. The whole thing had been easier to deal with when he’d been picturing some light-haired brunette going for an economics degree who smiled like a mom at soccer practice. Someone who Nursey could reasonably dislike on grounds of, like, predictability.
But no, Dex had to bring home a blue-haired physics major with a nose ring and good taste in music and the ability to out-argue Shitty while polishing off Bitty’s pie, i.e. perfect. Even Lardo couldn’t pretend like she wasn’t awesome for Nursey’s sake. Even Nursey can’t pretend like Amanda isn’t awesome for his own sake. She’s just so--so--
Nursey squints.
So-- making out with some random girl in a blouse at a frat party.
What the fuck.
Nursey is about two margaritas and three years too deep to be dealing with the emotional ramifications of catching the girlfriend of his best friend (who he’s also kind of sort of possibly maybe totally in love with) macking on some consultant for Goldman Sachs or some shit in the basement of arguably one of the worst frats at Samwell. This one doesn’t even have good music, Nursey’s only here to get drunk without the possibility of Dex calling Nursey Patrol and helping Nursey up the stairs and saying nothing about the poetry Nursey spills or the way his hands linger.
(Fuck does Nursey hate Nursey Patrol, fuck does he hate how much he loves it.)
Nursey downs the rest of the champagne flute--which was probably mostly orange juice at this point anyway-- and hands the red Solo cup to a freshman gearing himself up to talk to a cute boy a few feet away and then Nursey gets the fuck out of dodge. He manages to get a better look at the corporate recruiter Amanda is cheating on Dex with (and really, if you’re going to cheat on Dex, you’re really going to pick a chick in a blouse that probably has opinions on the stock market???) and if he hadn’t been sure before, the distinctive tattoo on Amanda’s shoulder proves that it’s really her.
(“Tattoos? Tattoos? I have tattoos.” “I know you do, Nurse.” “They’re really nice tattoos.” “I know they are, Nurse.”)
Emerging from the basement and then the frat house itself is instantly sobering. The chill from winter hasn’t quite left the air at night and Nursey wraps his arms around himself and doesn’t think about how Dex chirped him about not wearing a coat before he’d left. The frat isn’t far away from the Haus, thank god, but it is slightly farther when he turns left instead of right and then has to a backtrack a bit, but he still gets back in under ten minutes and he can still feel his hands, so overall, a win.
Attempting to get into the Haus quietly is a lost cause, given its one thousand year old floor and the fact that a ladybug could fart in the kitchen and wake up the guys in the attic. Still, Nursey gives it the good college try, which is why he’s creeping ridiculously through the living room when the light turns on suddenly and he screams, much to the amusement of Dex, standing in the kitchen doorway.
“Fuck, dude, what the fuck.”
Dex just smirks in that horribly attractive way of his. “How was the Psi-U basement?”
Nursey thinks of blue hair, washed out in the lights, Amanda’s hand on that girl’s cheek, the way Dex smiles when he’s around her. “Fine,” Nursey says, swaying.
The amusement falters and Nursey wishes he could figure out a way to keep the smile on Dex’s face the way Amanda does. Dex takes a step closer. “Are you alright?”
Nursey shakes his head violently and takes a step back, a step farther away. This is the part where he says yes, yes of course Dexy-darling, I’m right as rain, what about you? This is the part where Dex rolls his eyes and loops his arm around Nursey’s waist, his warm side pressed into Nursey’s. The part where they go upstairs, where Nursey writes his best poetry that he’s too embarrassed to write down when he’s sober, where Dex tells him to sleep well and lingers outside the doorway long enough for Nursey’s breathing to slow and then the floor creaks and Nursey knows he’s gone and wishes he’d held on just a little bit longer--
“Nursey, what’s wrong?”
Nursey shakes his head again. He means to say nothing, he means to say, I’m going to bed, he means to-- “Amanda, she--”
The concern turns to alarm. Why can’t Nursey ever make it better? “Is she alright? Did you see her? Is she okay?”
Nursey shakes his head again. He can’t seem to stop doing that. “She’s fine, she--she--” He swallows, and it’s sticky, cloying, citrusy and sweet on the back of his tongue. “She--there was this girl, she-- Amanda, she--”
Dex won’t stop frowning, concern knitting his eyebrows together with three short wrinkles, and Nursey has wanted to smooth them out with his fingertips every time he sees them since sophomore year, and he shouldn’t be doing this, shouldn’t be telling Dex this while he’s drunk, shouldn’t be telling Dex this at all, but he’s Nursey’s friend first and Nursey has to believe he’d tell Dex regardless of the love thing, he must--
“She was kissing some girl. In the Psi-U basement.”
The wrinkles smooth out. The amusement returns. Nursey--he can’t make sense of it over the ringing in his ears. Why is Dex smiling? Did--did Nursey do that?
“Did she look like a lawyer?” he asks, and at Nursey’s confusion clarifies, “The girl Amanda was kissing. Did she look like a lawyer?” Nursey nods dumbly. Dex’s smile only grows. Nursey is so, so confused and also more in love than he’s ever been. “Finally. I just won fifty bucks.”
What the fuck. “What the fuck.”
Dex laughs--laughs. “The girl’s name is Tammy. She graduated last year and moved to Boston. Amanda’s been in love with her forever, and I bet her that she’d get with Tammy before I--” Flush appears high on Dex’s cheeks, the soft pink one that means embarrassment and Nursey imagines would taste like cherry pie against his lips.
Nursey is--still quite a bit drunk. He needs--clarification. “You--you bet your girlfriend that she would get with her friend at a frat party?”
Dex’s nose scrunches up in Nursey’s favorite way--the same way it does when he’s trying to write humanities essays, the reason Nursey always says yes when Dex asks for help. “Girlfriend? Did you think Amanda was my girlfriend?”
Nursey remembers the start, hearing about Amanda every other day, then every day, then it was, sorry I can’t come, I’m meeting Amanda at-- and then one day at Annie’s, a girl with blue hair and a sharp grin yelled Babe! from across the room and planted a kiss on Dex’s cheek, her hand lingering on his shoulder, sipping from his coffee cup, getting him to smile like that--
“Well, yeah.” Nursey’s head is spinning and, for the first time tonight, not from the gin. “Is she--is she not?”
“Oh God, no, she’s so fucking gay, dude.” Laughter twinkles in Dex’s eyes. Nursey is drunker than he’s been since freshmen year of high school when Shitty snuck in some of his dad’s hard liquor and the janitors found them on the roof singing Disney songs at the moon. Dex’s girlfriend is gay. Dex’s girlfriend isn’t his girlfriend. Dex is--is smiling at him like he smiles at his girlfriend who isn’t his girlfriend.
“Oh,” Nursey says, dazed, “chill.”
“Oh wow,” Dex grins, leaning into the doorframe, “I can’t believe you thought--and you thought telling me my girlfriend was cheating on me at 3am while shit-drunk was a good idea?”
Nursey says, “Hey, honesty is important, and I’m not--” He stops. He remembers something. He squints. “Wait. If you bet 50 bucks on Amanda getting with Tammy, who did Amanda bet you would get with?”
The cherry pie blush is back. Nursey takes an absent-minded step forward. The room feels so much lighter now that Dex’s girlfriend isn’t cheating on him. The distance between them feels so much sillier now that Dex doesn’t have a girlfriend.
“Ah, well.” Dex rubs at the back of his neck, all country bumpkin sheepish to ask his sweetheart to the dance, and--and--
“I’m the sweetheart,” Nursey realizes with the kind of crystal clarity only afforded by the most copious amounts of alcohol.
Dex’s eyebrows furrow, those sweet little wrinkles appearing between them, and Nursey takes two long strides forward and presses his thumb into them. Dex goes cross-eyed trying to watch, but moves his eyes to meet Nursey’s after a moment.
Nursey grins, likely a bit sloppy from the gin, but he can’t find it in himself to care at the moment. “I’m the sweetheart,” he repeats, beaming.
Dex tries to repress the smile at his lips. “You’re not a sweetheart.”
“Yes I am,” Nursey sings, listing forwards. “You like me.”
“You’re an asshole.” Dex’s smile grows. Nursey watches its progress and sways.
“They’re not mutually exclusive,” he says, tracking the pink lips as they spread, revealing teeth and--and tongue and--
“I hate that you can still say mutually exclusive when you’re this drunk.”
“I’m not that drunk.”
“Yeah?”
“Mhmm. See, I’ll prove it.”
“How do you plan on--”
If Dex’s mouth weren’t so preoccupied, he might say that the taste on Nursey’s tongue is a good indication that he is in fact fairly tipsy, but as it is--well. He’s got other things to do.
(Amanda asserts that they tied since it happened on the same night and only pays $25. Tammy throws in five more and a condom and they call it even. Nursey kisses away Dex’s protest and pockets the condom, much to Amanda’s amusement. Turns out, she’s even cooler when she isn’t dating the love of Nursey’s life.)
OKAY HI, THOUGHTS @adambirkholtz had an excellent post about symbolism and the number that Bitty wears in his flashback and it got me thinking about Bitty’s football position and i went off in the tags (soz about that em) but here’s a post ab it, idk if anyone else has ever said anything about this but here’s what i remembered about that update
so i don’t know a whole lot about football, it is neither my primary nor my secondary nor my tertiary sport, but i know enough that this is something i just realized.
So Bitty wears no. 15 in the flashback in Check and yeah it’s a concussion induced flashback so maybe he’s just wearing no. 15 because that’s his number, but I also think it means something
(also sidenote he’s adorable)
and in football you only kind of get to choose your numbers, basically your number correlates to your position and there’s a range you can pick from/be assigned. All that’s important to know here is that quarterbacks wear numbers from 0-19.
So, Bitty was a quarterback. and here’s the thing about a quarterback. Traditionally it is the safest and most secure position in football. If your teammates are playing the game right, no one should ever lay a hand on you unless it’s part of the play. You should still be able to hold your own, but you’re protected. As a quarterback, your job is to call signals and communicate with your team and guide the play. Quarterback can be small, especially in youth sports because what’s really important is your ability to throw the ball and understand plays.
So all that being said
This
should almost never happen.
There are specific members of a football team whose entire job it is to protect the quarterback and for this to have happened, they were either really bad, or they intentionally let Bitty get hurt.
I don’t think Bitty’s fear of physicality came from simply playing football, it came from being on a team where no one had his back even though positionally, they were absolutely supposed to. It’s not that he’s just afraid of getting hurt or getting hit, he’s afraid of being abandoned and alone and left to fend for himself while he’s playing a team sport.
It makes SMH’s unofficial motto of “got your back” mean just a little bit more
lardo: "aaaahhhhh" good argument. you can tell he's a lawyer.
tater: zimboni choose now! we are men. tell us.
jack: listen i got engaged 5 hours ago
shitty: ASKDFJ WE MET 5 YEARS AGO!!!!!
the only argument against letting shitty be the best man is that he will cry the whole time. but I think he can hold back the full-on sobbing until the ceremony is done
germansingergirl
kianamaiart
snowghoul
turnnoffyourmind
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
yousharknotpass
