given the current climate this pride especially i feel i must mention that i love my trans friends, i stand with trans people in the fight against transphobic legislation and those who would enforce it, and this blog is not a good place for you to be if you do not vibe with that
y'all guess who found the beginning of her draft for this and even more shockingly it is kind of good
This was possibly the longest awkward silence ever. When April had arranged for him to share the car ride from Buffalo with someone, Adam had thought that implied someone with any personality. Yeah, maybe they were in an off-again portion of their relationship right now, but he thought she would still have the decency to not make an eight-hour road trip more tortuous than it already was. But in the hour they’ve driven so far, Jack Zimmermann and his one-syllable responses (seriously, was this some sort of vow of silence?) had barely given any signs of life, let alone good company.
The 2026 WIP Big Bang & WIP Reverse Bang Is Open For Sign-Ups!
Welcome to a new round! This is the thirteenth year we've hosted the WIP Big Bang, which is for finishing fic and getting art to go with it, and introducing the third year we've had the WIP Reverse Bang, which is for finishing artwork and getting fic to go with it. All fandoms/ratings/ships are welcome, including original works!
Please read our FAQ before signing up.
Schedule
All times are by 11:59pm PST. Convert time zones.
Big Bang/Reverse Bang Sign-ups- April 1st - June 1st
Big Bang/Reverse Bang Check In #1- May 22nd - May 29th
Big Bang/Reverse Bang Check In #2- June 15th - June 22nd
Big Bang/Reverse Bang Snippets Due- July 1st - July 11th
Big Bang Art Claims/Reverse Bang Fic Claims- July 17th - August 14th
Big Bang/Reverse Bang Check In #3- July 22nd - July 29th
Big Bang/Reverse Bang Posting Claims- August 23rd - September 1st
Big Bang/Reverse Bang Check In #4- August 31st - September 7th
Official Big Bang/Reverse Bang Postings- September 8th - November 30th
Emergency Big Bang/Reverse Bang Postings- December 1st - December 31st
Thank you, Black people in fandom spaces. Thank you, Black creators and Black lurkers. Thank you Black artists, Black writers. Thank you, Black bloggers, Black influencers. Shoutout to those Black characters, both canon and original. Thank you, Black people, both queer and cishet.
Your perspectives matter. Your representation matters. You are not bothersome for demanding equal treatment in fandom. It is not your responsibility to make fandom more welcoming and inclusive to you. It is not your sole responsibility to create all of the Black-centered content. You are not "ruining" anyone's fun for demanding better for yourself, and anyone who says otherwise can go fuck themselves. Any fandom worth being a part of should have no room for racism in it.
Black people in fandom, you are wanted. You are needed. You are loved and appreciated. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
And since they don't get told it near enough, thank you, Black women especially!!!
You are not "ruining" anyone's fun for demanding better for yourself, and anyone who says otherwise can go fuck themselves. Any fandom worth being a part of should have no room for racism in it.
Pov: you are looking down at some nurseydex out of the tree in the front yard of the haus.
I need a nurseydex scene like this. They need to be chilling at a kegster laughing at jokes and looking at stars. No arguing. No fights. Just fluff. Let's make it happen guys
I’ve decided to do something I’ve wanted to do for a long time: combine the comic, blog posts, extras, and tweets from Check, Please! into one document, because I’m crazy.
I read the main comic the night of The Sophomore Year Kiss™ and went back to read the extras shortly after. Going back and reading the extras was a daunting task back in 2016, and it’s much harder today - there’s so much stuff! Not to mention that Bitty’s Twitter was private by the time I started reading the comic, so I didn’t see most of the tweets until Chirpbook was published. Plus, I struggle to find all the blog posts on the official site, and I am a blog post truther! Sophomore Year doesn’t hit the same without the commentary! Nothing emotionally destroys me like: “The secret to drawing a younger Jack is making him smile, the end. Hahaha, now we’re all sad.” Lastly, some of my friends love the comic and find both Tumblr and the official site hard to navigate, so I wanted to make this a resource for them so they don’t miss out on all those delightful ask-a-wellies and sketch jams.
What I always wanted was to have that true multi-platform experience (comics, blogs, tweets, and extras) in order. With that, I present this slideshow.
The extras on these slides are ONLY things that (as far as I know) aren't available anywhere other than Tumblr/the website. Please buy the comic and also Chirpbook and Madison and the Huddles. They’re worth every penny!!!!!! (seriously please please please please this comic is so good you want to give Ngozi all of your money please please please you want to so bad subscribe to the patreon while you're at it)
Also, if you want to help with this project, think anything should be edited, or have ideas on how to make it more effective/better/fun, please let me know! I just love this comic so much!!! I have only done through the end of Year 2 right now.
OMG Check, Please! but it’s everything* i love being insane *only up until Year 3 is currently done
my fav relationship ship dynamic is where it doesn't matter if you call it platonic or romantic or queerplatonic because they always act the same in every type of relationship. and the way they act? fucking weird.
HEYA!
As we all know, valentines is coming up and with it also comes the birthday of the one and only DEREK ''NURSEY'' NURSE
And since we wanted to celebrate it, me (@atlasthemayor) and @zimmerdouche wanted to make a little event for everyone who felt like participating!
We've come up with a list of prompts (and an alternative one in case some words aren't to your fancy) for y'all to follow along Starting Next Week on Monday February 9th!!
No need for signups or anything of the sort, just post your art/fics/edits/etc with the theme of the day! (And make sure to tag us so we can see it!)
See you dudes next week!
Holsom Wild West AU, inspired by this ask by @dykeseinfeld <3
Stars sprawl wide and lazy just outside the mouth of their cave and the fire casts deep, secretive shadows across the rocks around them, sparks spitting upwards before falling back down, low light painting Dr. Oluransi’s face with a warm and thoughtful glow. No way to tell what he’s thinking about, though. The good doctor’s always pensive, always a little quiet and a little stubborn, always eyeing the arches they pass like they’re a hair's breadth away from a gunfight. Holster can appreciate a thing like that. You don’t live long out here without suspecting most everything.
Day two, the doc had said to call him Justin. Holster forms the word a fortnight later, tastes it on his tongue, swallows it again. At this time of night, it’d come out of his mouth a little too reverent for his liking. Justin and Holster don’t go together. There’s no use wanting them to, not when they’re so close to the doc’s new posting, not when there’s a letter from a perfectly respectable young lady tucked away in his luggage. Holster had found it that second night, needing to know if someone else had a claim on his name first.
Justin, in someone else’s writing. Pressed and sealed with the kind of wax that shouts it came from someone important and belongs to someone loved. He’d picked up the letter carefully, then roughly, realizing how pristine it still was even after traveling miles at a time. Not enough to wrinkle it. Just enough to leave a smudgy thumbprint in the corner. Dr. Oluransi has never so much as mentioned it.
Dr. Oluransi’s hands are steady on his reins. His hands are steady chopping vegetables for their lackluster stews, steady here now as he leans against the wall of their cave, shirt still buttoned neat even though it’s drenched from the snarling thunderstorm that drove them in here. Holster doesn’t wanna think about riding into town tomorrow and leaving without him but he’s stuck on the doctor’s ankle, bare beneath his pants, so Holster forces himself to consider this absence. Forces himself to hold it lovingly. He’s been alone before and survived; he’ll do it again.
The fire twists and trips and smiles broad. Holster watches it instead of witnessing how the doctor peels off his shirt. Or, doesn’t witness too much. Doesn’t pack this moment into his saddle bag so he can pull it out later. Doesn’t make an effort to remember how Dr. Oluransi’s eyes find his over the fire, or at least, when Hoster gives in and meets his gaze steadily, at least someday he’ll forget the way the doctor seems to catch his breath. Does his best not to feel the doctor’s gaze dip below his collarbones when he takes off his own shirt.
Holster’s got at least seven guns on him and has survived countless shootouts and duels and stampedes, outran a flash flood, broken out of every cell and stock this side of the country has to offer, drank a couple dozen men under the table before walking off with their horses. He’s the quickest draw in the West and has the wanted posters to prove it. It takes more than eye contact with a beautiful man with beautiful cheekbones to throw him off balance.
It’d take something like this: the doctor sighs, pokes a stick in the fire, says, “I can’t bear this. What’d I gotta do to earn a kiss off you?”
Three years ago, a stray bullet cut straight through someone else’s brawl and clipped his ear, and it felt something like this. Searing, startling, nothing to do for it other than to draw and shoot back.
Holster leans forward. Makes sure he feels the warmth of the fire on his chest, knows his collarbones will catch this flickering light, sees Dr. Oluransi look and look and look away, swallowing hard.
He says, “I don’t think you’re wanting all that,” and Dr. Oluransi raises his eyebrows. He pushes on, saying, “I’ve escorted young ladies and promising young men who wanted a roll in the hay before they had to settle down. Think that sounds familiar?”
“Don’t pretend to tell me that you denied all of them,” Dr. Oluransi says, and now he meets Holster’s eyes steadily.
Dr. Oluransi is — hell. Handsome, sweet-faced with sharp eyes and a sharper, prettier, deadlier mouth than anyone he’s ever had before. Holster wants to is the problem, he’s always been too quick for it, has had to leave a couple towns for being too eager to say yes. He’s never had a problem skipping out in the middle of the night. This — the way the doctor’s looking at him, that letter, the smooth way he rides in the saddle — this is promising a ruinous thing.
Holster laughs. It lands fake and flawed, a poor attempt to convince them both to say no to this. “So that’s all you’re wanting, then? You want me to fuck someone outta your head?” He shakes his head. “You’re gonna have to work on your sweet talk, Doc.”
“You really should call me Justin,” the doctor says and — that. That crookedly self-satisfied smile, that’s what’ll kill Holster if they kiss.
He says, helpless, “I can’t call you that,” and Dr. Oluransi rests his head against the cave wall. “You know I can’t,” and Holster makes one small, aching, awkward move to be closer to him.
“Why not?”
Holster runs his fingers through his hair and pulls lightly. “You know you’d ruin me, if I called you that. If you let me, you'd be ruined too.”
“And what,” Dr. Oluransi says, moving in closer himself, “makes you think that?”
“You’re not mine.”
It echoes, it lingers; it lands with an oh on the doctor’s shoulders. He clears his throat. “Were the others?”
Holster smiles a little, dry and terrible. “No.”
“Did they want to be?”
“Yes. But I couldn’t — we couldn’t keep each other, not like that. I couldn’t do that to them.”
The doctor tilts his head and the firelight sticks to his throat and oh, Holster wants to kiss him there. Right where the light collects under his jaw. “Why couldn’t you?”
“You know why,” he says. Spreads his hands, shrugs like it doesn’t matter, looks at the fire and says, “Upstanding ladies and gentlemen don’t go with outlaws. Doctors don’t either.”
“Holster—”
“I won’t have you for a night,” Holster says softly, eyes shut, “when I have to let go of you tomorrow. That’s a line I won’t cross. Not with you.”
A shadow crosses in front of him and he blinks, fire seared into his retinas. Justin’s on his knees with that same stubborn look on his face that he’s had this whole journey. Bare skin glistening with sweat and raindrops and the sparks the fire’s still sending out. Pretty, lethal mouth determined. They’re not touching, but they could be.
Justin says, “Don’t let me go, then.”
“Justin, we can’t, you know that we—”
He interrupts with a hand on Holster’s knee and an “I’ve been thinking. What if I stayed, and you called me Ransom? You know I'm a reliable bet.”
The world stops, ends, starts. Like a jab to the stomach. Like a bullet grazing an ear. Like a paper cut he’d been looking for and didn’t want to find.
“What about your girl,” Holster says. Fuck, he wants this so badly. He doesn’t trust how much he wants it.
Ransom shrugs. “I’ll send her a letter. She isn’t someone I can keep either.”
“Ransom—”
“Holster.” Ransom raises his eyebrows again; Holster maybe wants to kiss them, too. “I know you’ve seen how I look at you. You know I haven’t been meaning to hide it. You know I’ve seen you looking back.”
They could be touching — Holster reaches out, holds Ransom’s earlobe before letting go, before Ransom places his hand on his waist. He’s so — Holster traces a loose circle on his skin, watches the goosebumps rise.
“Tell me you want this,” Holster whispers. “That you’ve thought about everything, that you know there won’t be a place for us save for the ones we make ourselves.”
Ransom smooths the hair off Holster’s forehead. “I’ve lived more these last two weeks than I have for the last five years,” he says. “This isn’t a losing game, and I’d be gaining a hell of a lot if I got to kiss you, touch you like that. It’s hardly even a question.”
Oh. He sounds so — it sounds like a decision he made ages ago and is only now sharing. It sounds like he doesn’t know doesn’t know he’s putting the world into Holster’s hands, or maybe — maybe he does, because he’s taking it too, he’s telling into Holster’s world at the same time, diving deep like it’s an oasis he can’t wait to explore. Sure and steady, and quick for it. Exactly the kind of person Holster would want watching his back.
“Ransom and Holster,” he says. It tastes sweet on his tongue.
Ransom’s smile spreads slowly and rich like molasses, like a first kiss. “Holster and Ransom.”
“It fits you good,” Holster tells him, and when they kiss, Holster pulls him closer by his belt and Ransom cradles his jaw, holds him like a rainstorm, pouring together like a river floods its banks. Nearly and almost until all at once there’s nowhere to go but everywhere.
“I wanna go everywhere with you,” Holster says later, half a gasp and half a sigh stuck in his voice. “Go everywhere with me. Say you will.”
It’s I will kissed to his shoulder and be here with me now whispered against his collarbone and let me keep you, be here to the underside of his jaw. So he focuses here and — here, Ransom’s knee, his hip; here, Ransom’s lips, a scar on his chin — stays here, lets himself keep and be kept as the thunderstorm crawls its way across the desert.
Wishing you the best in the worst way
Using your distress as foreplay
When it’s really bad — really bad. Like, Nursey just woke up to silence so pointed it nearly impales him, because Dex is fuming around the Haus, and his hair’s standing up from all the times he’s pulled on it — when it’s bad like that, when his d-man’s mad like that, fuck, Nursey likes him best like that.
It’s the way the corner of Dex’s mouth is a steep ski slope slanting downward. It’s the way his stupid eyebrows look when they’re all angry at his forehead and his nose and at him, at Nursey, for breathing too loud. And when he’s mad enough to go on runs … when he’s pissy but more mellowed when he comes back, and sweaty … well. Nursey kinda likes how his sweat smells.
All he ever has to say is, “Fuck’s your problem,” and it’s enough to get Dex all worked up. He did it earlier and he’s watching hour five of a perfect storm from the reading room, roof shingles gritty under his palms. Dex jogs up the road. Dex, sweaty and glistening from it even at this distance, scowls up at him as he bounds up the porch.
A heavy pounding on the stairs like someone’s attacking the steps with mallets. Nursey grins.
“Alright, Nurse,” Dex says, easing the window open another couple of inches. It squeaks against the frame. When he sits, his knee brushes Nursey’s thigh for a moment before he huffs and moves away. His knee felt good there.
Nursey says, “All right what, Poindexter?”
“Alright, let’s hear it. Why’d you want me all worked up today?”
Ooo, that feels weird. Sounded weird too; Dex said it pretty calmly, evenly. That’s not how this is supposed to go. Nursey’s supposed to boil his brain until Dex is a freight train at full speed, not not give him time to be all — mature. Nursey makes a face.
Dex raises his eyebrows. Nursey wants to throw him off balance, to startle him into retreating. “You’re really hot when you’re mad,” he says. “Did you know that?”
There — mouth screwed up like Dex tasted something sour, like when someone pranked the water bottles at practice by half-filling them with lemon juice. Nursey grins; Dex’s lips pucker, eyebrows settling back into a scowl. This is so easy.
Dex claws at his shirt and yanks him closer and kisses him.
And Nursey — freezes. Dex kisses him. Nursey blinks, willing his mind to work, fighting to move his hand — to Dex’s cheek? In a fist or a caress? — or just lean into this, knocked off balance himself and unsure if he likes it. Startled. Dex used his strategy against him.
He’s just figured out what he wants to do when Dex sits back. The whole thing takes about fifteen seconds, but Nursey can’t breathe when Dex looks at him, can’t say anything when Dex nods. There’s a creeping pink crawling across his freckles.
“So. Nurse,” Dex says, studying him. “You can just do that instead, okay? If you want a reaction from me.”
Nursey clears his throat. He says, “Okay,” and his voice isn’t anywhere near steady, but Dex doesn’t tease him about it. Okay, so they’re in new territory now. Nursey sucks in his bottom lip, catches it with his teeth. He can live with that.
Dex smiles faintly as they watch the sunset. Nursey stares and doesn’t bother to hide his attention, and when the sun sets, Dex looks back.
send me a #1-100 & a ship and I’ll write something based off my 2023 Spotify Wrapped
Oh, I'm looking for affection in all the wrong places
And we'll keep falling on each other to fill the empty spaces
It’s easy like this. A look across the ice, a whispered room number during a fight, a teasing amount of eye contact during handshakes. It’s easy, meeting Birkholtz in the lobby. Justin likes the way he looks in his soft sweatpants and softer hoodie. Likes the way he isn’t surprised, not anymore, when he sees Justin waiting for him by the elevators. As if it were inevitable.
Oh, but that’s dangerous to think about. Oh, if he likes Birkholtz’s face too much — the elevator lighting softens his jaw, smudges away the sharpness of his cheekbones, caresses his lips with a gentle touch; Justin wants to trace the light with his fingertips — if he gets used to him, stretched out and gasping under Justin’s hands, then he’s fucked. Harvard and Samwell don’t get along. Men’s hockey, in general, isn’t very kind to players who kiss each other after tourneys.
Maybe it’d be easier with someone else. When they’re done, Justin showers while Birkholtz flips through TV channels and wishes he’d asked him to join. Wonders if he would’ve said yes. They’ve been sleeping together for a year and now there’s some kind of ache between his ribs when Justin thinks about him slipping out in the morning. If Birkholtz was someone else, maybe he would stay the night.
The problem is that Justin likes the look of Birkholtz in his bed. The problem is Justin likes the taste of Birkholtz in his mouth. The problem is, Justin wants more than what they’ve agreed on, wants more than casual hookups in impersonal hotel rooms, wants a kiss in the morning and breakfast after.
“Hey,” he says as he sits on the bed. Birkholtz spread out and claimed two of the four pillows while Justin showered, one under his chin and the other between his knees. He doesn’t say anything. Justin risks a glance at his face and — oh, he looks so soft when he’s asleep. Justin hadn’t realized how long his eyelashes were before now. Subtle freckles sprinkle over his nose, his cheeks; Justin has an impossible urge to kiss the ones on his forehead. He turns the TV off instead.
Adam Birkholtz, asleep. In the quiet, Justin whispers, “Night, Adam,” before arranging his own pillows like he can stop himself falling apart if he just holds on tight enough.
Birkholtz breathes steady and rhythmic on the other side of the bed. Justin closes his eyes and follows him into a dreamless sleep.
And in the morning, he eats breakfast alone.
send me a #1-100 & a ship and I’ll write something based off my 2023 Spotify Wrapped
