Bittle-Birkholtz-Brousins Part 2: puberty and beyond

61below:

halfabreath:

as promised, a continuation of this post. this will be tagged “bbb” on my blog if you want to read more. this got really long so buckle up buttercups:

• puberty hits holster like a god damn truck. he goes from tall and gangly to taller and gangly to tall and built and eventually he’s the only guy in his high school who can grow a full beard
• meanwhile puberty seems to miss bitty altogether and he like, grows a littler taller and he has to constantly remind people that they’re only 4 years apart, thank you very much  
• like they go see PG-13 movies together and they get kicked out of the theater because “you can’t bring your kid brother in here” and holster’s so so touched that this random movie attendant thinks they’re biological brothers while he has to hold bitty back 
• “dude, duuuuuuuude, we’re like, beyond brousins now! we are” holster’s literally tearing up “we’re bros”
• bitty, kicking and screaming, “I’M THIRTEEN YEARS OLD, ADAM”
• “like, for real bros”
• “I CAN LEGALLY SEE THIS MOVIE”
• “brothers, man. brothers.”
• “ADAM.”
• as @abominableobriens so brilliantly pointed out to me, the Atlanta Thrashers were around from 1999-2011 (they became the Winnipeg Jets) and that’s bitty and holster’s team
• not their individual favorite teams, but their team
• they have custom made jerseys that say Brousins on the back
• watching a Thrashers game is a sacred tradition for them, there’s a special opening ceremony that must be performed, events that have to occur between periods, specific pies that must be consumed, jams that must be listened to, blanket forts that must be erected 
• it’s actually a rule that you have to say erected instead of built/constructed/made/etc
• holster becomes 5x grumpier when the sabres play the thrashers because it’s like his two geographical identities physically fighting and bitty has to make him a special North South apple/peach pie just to get him through it
• note: this tradition continues and no one on SMH can figure out why holster always gets a special “y’all left georgia but we still love you” pie whenever the jets play
• holster and his dad are actually more religious than bitty and his fam are
• they go to temple together whenever jacob’s in town, there isn’t a hebrew school in madison so holster does one on one lessons with the rabbi, but judy is still a southern baptist and goes to church whenever suzanne, bitty, and coach do which really isn’t super often but they always go on big holidays
• holster’s mom is Conservative while his dad is Reform
• he keeps kosher when he visits his mom’s house and they have really traditional shabbat dinners, just the two of them and adam honestly loves it
• it’s not uncommon for his dad to be away on shabbat so they celebrate when they’re together and judy totally takes part!! there are some things she can’t do because she’s not jewish and bitty also joins in sometimes
• a few people have asked if bitty makes holster jewish food and while i think he’s definitely tried i also think it’s important to keep the creation of cultural objects firmly within the agency of whomever is part of that culture, i.e. bitty, as a non-jew, shouldn’t be the authority on jewish food. holster is a jock boi and bitty is a canonically good cook but these dishes are still a part of holster’s identity, not bitty’s, and it seems disingenuous to place anything pertaining to jewish culture under a gentile’s expertise. i hope that makes sense? there was another post i saw floating around that explained this really well if anyone can find it
• that being said!!! bitty shows holster how to cook in general (techniques, knife skills, why not to leave the burner on, etc) and holster shares recipes and they make stuff together fairly often
• their hamantashen are the stuff of legends, winners of awards, the first thing to disappear at family gatherings
• holster often introduces bitty as a Certified Mensch and All Around Upstanding Goy
• when holster gets his drivers license he and bitty immediately go on Adventures (there’s the one time they go raspberry picking and they both end up stained in red juice and they look like something out of 300 when they return home from the Raspberry War)
• this is during bitty’s peak figure skating years and he’s always busy training or driving to competitions or working on routines and he’s really good, like so good it’s almost hard to watch because holster can’t imagine being as good at anything as bitty is at figure skating
• holster attends pretty much every competition that doesn’t conflict with his own practice/game schedule and gets really into figure skating, to this day he has Very Strong Opinions on the last world championships and has a technical knowledge of the sport
• he and bitty get very, very into the winter olympics and basically lock themselves in bitty’s basement and watch every ice skating competition and hockey game and scream and throw things at the TV when they’re upset
• many of you have asked about The Closet Incident, and yeah, it still happened. 
• bitty was in 7th grade  which by my calculations means that holster was a sophomore in high school so they weren’t in the same school then 
• BUT adam birkholtz has seven senses (6 is perfect pitch and harmonic mastery) and his 7th is Eric Bittle’s Safety, Happiness and Emotional Preservation and he’s actually the one who tracks bitty down and finds him
• i’m not saying holster has threatened a 7th grader but holster has intimidated a few 7th and 8th graders to determine the location of his beloved brousin 
• bitty still has a physical touch/eventual checking phobia! this was still traumatic as shit! but holster is one of the few large men who bitty is 100% comfortable with, and this is because
• a. they have a deep emotional bond forged by years of shit talking their relatives
• b. holster was the one who found him, he’s associated with safety and home and unconditional support
• c. holster is very, very careful around bitty. he becomes louder so bitty can always hear him coming so he’s not surprised when holster appears behind him, he asks permission to hug him until bitty grants him full hug consent, he’s bitty’s one man defense squad when they’re in a crowd and clears a huge path for him, he picks bitty up from school every day and makes it clear he’s not to be messed with
• holster spends some holidays back in buffalo with his mom but he and bitty IM each other the entire time and some of bitty’s early youtube videos are actually a Vlog Brothers-esque thing where he’s making videos specifically for holster to watch when he’s away 
• so yeah, holster’s seen the vlog. he’s been on the vlog. he was the vlog’s first subscriber. he wrote the opening jingle for the vlog
• holster’s presence does help keep bitty from being bullied in high school, but bitty does have three years without him there after he graduates
• also the truth is that holster’s not like incredibly popular either? he doesn’t have the social capital to really protect bitty because while he’s on the football team for a bit (because coach really wanted him to be) he’s clearly more invested in hockey and is still a northern jew in a sea of southern WASPs and really he can only protect bitty because of his sheer size
• that being said holster has definitely fought people on bitty’s behalf but bitty’s actually pretty angry about it and it’s one of the few points of tension in their relationship
• this is random but Adele’s 21 came out in 2011 and holster fuckin lost it and it’s all they listened to in the car for like two months (i headcanon that adele is to holster as beyonce is to bitty so they’re the only people who understand why an album release can be so incapacitating) 
• bitty literally has to sit and rub holster’s back while he lays on the ground and sings “don’t you remember” into the carpet
• i’m sorry but i think that’s one of the funniest things i’ve ever written and if someone drew it i would probably die
• bitty’s mothering instincts are pretty much honed because of holster
• sun screen? always has some, because while bitty is revitalized by the sun’s rays holster just gets burned 
• note: holster spends every summer between the ages of 12-21 sunburned and sweating gratuitously because his body cannot. adjust. to. the. humidity.
• first aid kit? you never know when you might some band aids – ADAM GET DOWN FROM THAT TELEPHONE POLE HOW ARE YOU SEVENTEEN YEARS OLD I SWEAR
• snacks? y’all know holster is the inspiration for the term hangry
• speaking of y’all, holster says it. he does. it just sneaks up on you and when you least expect it, it just comes out of you. now imagine someone with a buffalo accent saying it. hilarious right?? holster’s accent is all over the place
• and on that note bitty has been known to say holy hell
• bitty comes out to holster when he’s fourteen and holster’s about to leave to play in juniors (and why does no one in this fandom acknowledge that holster lived in fucking iowa for 2 years????)
• holster’s just a grumpy jock who doesn’t really know what to do so he just hugs bitty for a long, long time and makes shitty jokes until he breaks down and tells bitty how much he loves him and how his sexuality will never, ever change that
• he also goes on a rambly tangent about how it’s totally normal for straight guys to think that other men are attractive and that plenty of straight guys (he knows, he’s straight) sometimes think about kissing other guys (but everyone does it, holster knows, because holster is Straight)
• bitty’s engulfed by holster’s hug but he’s nodding along like…sure…that sounds heterosexual…………………
• literally one month later holster calls bitty in a Bisexual Panic™ because he just realized he feels something beyond bromance for a guy on his team and he Can’t Deal with this, he really Can’t
• they “fight” about who has to come out to the family first
• “eric you realized you were gay like a million years before the great bisexual awakening of 2010”
• “yeah but you’re older and let’s be honest you’re going to date before i am”
• “eric bittle birkholtz are you saying you can’t get a man because that is THE MOST RIDICULOUS THE BITTLE-BIRKHOTLZ-BROUSINS ARE THE FINEST SPECIMENS ON ALL SIDES OF THE MASON-DIXON LINE”
• holster actually comes out to his mom first and it really doesn’t go well so he keeps it v under wraps after that
• it’s a tough two years for our guys, actually. bitty’s in high school (which we all know was hard for him) and holster’s homesick in juniors, realizing that he’s going to have to make non-NHL life plans
• there’s a weekend when one of holster’s games and one of bitty’s competitions are in the same random town in Bumfuck, Ohio and they have this loud, joyful reunion in the middle of main street and cause a huge scene (holster almost gets arrested because he’s like throwing bitty into the air and people can’t tell if bitty is happy or angry – he’s both because he gets to see holster but holster is throwing him around)
• then samwell shows interest in holster and he pretty much decides to go based on the hockey program alone
• and suddenly, holster’s at samwell with an amazing new team and a best friend and he gets to play with jack zimmermann (bitty knows who he is this time around because c’mon, you know holster tried to show him fanfic and had a poster of bad bob on his wall but bitty never became a zimmerfann)
• meanwhile bitty’s given up figure skating, he’s stuck in high school and his best friend has moved away (again) and suddenly seems to care more about Ransom and Kegsters and saying ‘swawesome than anything else
• bitty almost doesn’t attend samwell out of spite but when he goes up to visit holster during his senior year he falls in love with the place PLUS he gets to play hockey?? with holster?? which sounds awesome?? or should he say ‘swawesome now???????

Bittle-Birkholtz-Brousins Part 3: The Samwell Years is upcoming! stay tuned

…holster lived in fucking iowa for 2 years???? Oh my god, like, I knew this but I didn’t really internalize it… but do you realize what happens with classically trained choral singers? (And with Holster as into a cappella as he is, you know that’s how this boy got his music credit) DO YOU KNOW WHAT HAPPENS? All that training to blend with your partners’ tone? [[no seriously if you’ve been in a Serious Choir they will pair you next to the people with whom your voice blends best, it’s so strange that it works, wtf physics]] IT MEANS YOU START TO ABSORB ACCENTS. I’ve accidentally acquired a German accent after listening to an audiobook. Now imagine that Upstate New York accent getting mangled around an Iowan accent. Imagine Holster trying to parse Québécois, Georgian, Bostonian (both posh and brash bc shitty is a troll) AND SoCal.