My friend @sunlightsymphony has made a beautiful podfic of Lonesome Road - it’s a joy to listen to. This angsty Zimbits fic with a happy ending is one of my favorites. I wrote it for the Heartbreak Fest in 2017, so please note the tags/tw. Enjoy the podfic, it’s amazing!
Summary: After rehab, Jack leaves home, unable to face his parents and the legacy he failed to uphold. He gets work as a truck driver and enjoys the relative solitude of it for a few years, until the day he picks up a hitch-hiking runaway from Georgia.
Nobody tagged me in the “show your top 3 Additional Tags on ao3” meme, but I’ve seen enough people say “consider yourself tagged to CONSIDER MYSELF TAGGED, so:
Canon divergence: hell yeah
First kiss: yup sounds right
Food: …food? What the— :eyes Eric Richard Bittle, cheerfully stress-baking his way through life: yeah okay. Food.
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 wholelot 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 Checkand 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 canbe 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 neverhappen.
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, orthey 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
It’s Only a Change of Time (2446 words) by Sophia_Prester Chapters: 1/15 Fandom:Check Please! (Webcomic) Rating: Mature Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Eric “Bitty” Bittle/Jack Zimmermann, past jack/kent - Relationship, offscreen Jack Zimmermann/Camilla Collins Characters: Jack Zimmermann, John Johnson (Check Please!), Eric “Bitty” Bittle, Shitty Knight, Kent “Parse” Parson, Coach Hall (Check Please!), Bob Zimmermann, Alicia Zimmermann Additional Tags: Stanley Cup magic AU, Angst with a Happy Ending, Psychological Horror, Non-Linear Narrative, Alternate Histories, Metaphysical Shenanigans, references to drug abuse, Rehab, memory problems, Anxiety, Panic Attacks, Unrequited Love, Temporary Character Death, Violence, Injury, hockey history, RL players are mentioned/used for plot purposes but do not actually appear, Fluff Summary:
Every hockey player knows the Stanley Cup is supposed to be magic.
Most of them know the stories about wishes and curses and visions of things that never happened.
A few players know for themselves what the Cup’s magic can do.
What no one knows is what the Cup’s magic is.
What it is, is old. Powerful. Dangerous.
And it has been waiting for someone like Jack Zimmermann for a very long time.
Too bad Jack can’t remember why. Or what he’s supposed to do about it.
Summary: When Jack met Bitty at the Paradise Found club, he thought he had found a perfect dance partner—then one misunderstanding caused things to fall apart. A story about what happens when you misjudge someone but eventually open yourself up to friendship and love.
Characters: Jack Zimmermann, Eric Bittle, Shitty Knight, Lardo Duan, Tater Mashkov
Tags: Enemies to Friends, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, First Impressions, falling in like, Bitty is a Little Shit, tater is a wingman, shitty and lardo are wingpeople, getting to know people a tiny Pride and Prejudice influence, pining, Awkward Jack, they both eventually get with the program
“You’re trying to bribe me into makin’ a fool of myself in from of Jack Zimmermann?” “Is it working?”
Bitty is offered $100 by his teammates if only he can get the Jack Zimmermann to sign his forehead after a Falcs game. He can’t just let that cash go down the drain.
there’s not a lot of canon stuff i’m willing to fight ngozi on but eric richard bittle being a blackhawks fan is and always be the very first thing on that list
well, he is a white boy from georgia. it makes sense that he wouldn’t see the issue, at least at first. as a white kid from the south, there was a lot of racist shit that i didn’t realize was racist, or that i just hadn’t thought about at all until friends talked to me about their experiences, or until took ethnic studies classes in college. i doubt he would have gotten any sort of quality diversity education in georgia, and we don’t know if he’s taken any ethnic studies classes in college. i hope ngozi shows this, i hope somebody sits bitty down and tells him why that team’s mascot is racist, and i hope he takes it to heart. i want to see a good example of somebody realizing their racism, apologizing for it, and doing their research to make sure they don’t make the same mistakes.
