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On Monday, Lardo attends the last class of her fall semester. So that’s ’swawesome.
What’s not ’swawesome is that she’s now got a week to take two finals, write a paper, and finish the installation project that’s been giving her one of those weirdly specific over-the-eye stress headaches for months now.
Whatever, dude. It’ll all get done.
And in the meantime, this Super Smash Bros Haus Tournament isn’t gonna play itself.
—
Lardo loses the whole thing by one stupid KO and has to present Dex with the trophy—12 empty PBR cans elaborately taped together and topped with a Yoshi figurine—while Chowder gazes on adoringly. Nursey hangs close too, gruffly slapping Dex on the shoulder.
Bonding is an important part of team dynamics, Lardo knows, and since initiation the D-men and their goalie seem closer than ever.
And, like, thank the universe for that. Thank the universe for her bed, too, where she flops gracelessly, face down, and passes the hell out.
—
She sleeps late into Dead Day, rolls out of bed and pulls on one of the many t-shirts Shitty has somehow left behind in her room, sits cross-legged on her desk chair, and starts typing. She’s not, like, a fan of writing papers, but she knows if she doesn’t start now, she’ll run out of time.
She’s got the thing half done, and a wicked crick in her back, by the time Bitty gets worried enough to knock on her door. He’s got a plate of muffins and a giant cup of coffee in his hand.
“Thanks, Bits,” Lardo says as she takes the offered sustenance.
“Lotta work?” Bitty asks.
“Yeah,” Lardo sighs, just as something crashes down the stairs and Ransom starts yelling something she can’t make out. “So I better…” She nods her head back at her laptop.
“Right,” Bitty says with his adorable twang. “Good luck. See you tonight?”
“Bro, like I’d miss it.”
—
Samwell’s got some weird traditions, but Eggs-AM Breakfast might be the strangest. Or the best, depending on how you feel about breakfast foods. And puns.
After a full day of writing and studying and writing, Lardo is more than ready to be served midnight brunch by the college’s most-loved faculty members. She treks with the rest of the boys to the dining hall, tucked tightly into her coat against the cold night air. Bitty chats rapidly to Holster and Jack while they walk. Lardo’s short legs and general tiredness mean she’s at the back of the group, and she’s distracted thinking about tomorrow’s big test. She doesn’t even notice when Shitty drops back to fall in beside her.
He knocks his arm gently against her shoulder. Lardo looks up.
“You okay, bro?” Shitty’s voice is quiet in the dark. The streetlights shine off his mustache and the wave of his flow. It always looks so soft, Lardo thinks.
She shakes her head just a little, just to herself. “Yeah, dude, just tired. You know.”
“Yeah,” Shitty says profoundly. He wraps an arm around her shoulder as they walk, and Lardo lets herself lean into him.
It feels nice, tucked into his side like that, but then they’re at the student center entrance. Shitty steps away, holds the heavy glass door open for her.
They’re hit with a wave of noise coming from the dining hall, excited and stressed and worried and happy students all crowding in, chattering away, loading plates up with piles of food.
Lardo’s favorites, in reverse order, are:
4. Dr. Hart’s pancakes, drizzled in maple syrup
3. Dean Douglass’s homemade french toast sticks, which are way better than the frozen kind
2. Professor Winder’s fried plantains
1. Dr. Meyer’s hashbrowns, which he makes to order at the grill, chatting and joking with students as he brandishes a big metal spatula, and which Bitty assures everyone are as close to Southern style as you’re likely to get way up here
Lardo stuffs herself until she can barely keep her eyes open. The cold walk back to the house perks her up momentarily, but she’s asleep the moment she burrows into her bed.
—
She takes Wednesday’s final down with ease, though she does start to worry about the prevalence of violent sports metaphors in her vocabulary.
Lardo thinks in bullet points, in checklists and to do items. It’s why she makes a great team manager, she knows, and it’s why she worries she’ll never truly have the temperament to be an artist.
“‘Be’ an ‘artist,’” as Shitty would say—as Shitty has said, voice conveying those sarcastic quotation marks.
And it’s easy for Shitty, Lardo thinks. For as much as he tries to own his privilege, tries to use it responsibly, it’s easy for the boy with the trust fund and the family legacy. Easy for him not to worry about money, about work that makes money, about what work that makes money is the right work.
Lardo sighs. She starts another to do list.
—
The paper’s due a few hours after the next final but Lardo drops it in her professor’s box on Thursday morning, on her way to the lecture hall where she’ll sit with 50 other students and bubble in her scantron until her pencil squeaks.
She feels a momentary sense of lightness on her way out the door—three things down, only one to go. The sky is bright blue and the leaves are rustle-y on her walk back to the Haus. Lardo breathes deeply. The New England air still stings her lungs a little. She’ll probably never get used to it, but that’s okay.
She takes a nap, lets Bitty feed her pot pie for dinner, and then thinks about building the frame for the next piece of her installation.
She gets outrageously drunk instead.
Whatever, bro. She’s got a few days.
The boys, their friends, and actually most of the campus must feel the same, because the party they throw that night is kind of epic. Somebody puts a foot through the roof of the porch. Somebody explodes one of the cans of whipped cream they’ve been using for Bitty’s signature apple pie shots. It goes fucking everywhere. Somebody cleans it up before Lardo can get there, which is good.
Then somebody twirls an empty Bacardi bottle and declares it “totally time for Spin the Bottle, friends.” Which is bad.
“Spin the Bittle!” somebody else crows from the corner of the living room.
Bitty flushes bright, bright red, eyes big like a deer in headlights.
Lardo reaches out and ruffles his hair. “Don’t worry, Bits. Nobody’s spinning you while I’m around.”
“Thank god,” Bitty says, and his smile is good.
Ransom thumps them both on the backs, and ushers them into seated positions in the haphazard circle that’s formed around the living room floor.
“Yes means yes,” Shitty declares as he sets the bottle down ceremoniously in the middle of the floor, “and opting out is always an option.”
He takes the first turn and presses a brief kiss to the mouth of a sophomore swimmer, who giggles and touches her top lip afterward, like it tickles.
She gets someone Lardo doesn’t know, and the game goes from there, getting progressively rowdier with each round. Lardo accepts a sweet kiss from a girl in her program. The boys howl with appreciation.
Her spin finds Jack—holy shit, Lardo thinks, since when does Jack—but she crawls over to him anyway, because that’s the game, and he’s apparently in. His mouth is warm, and soft, and she can’t help tugging a little bit at his lower lip. It’s good, too, in a friendly way. Comfortable. No sparks.
“Nice, bro,” she says as she sits back, and Jack laughs.
Shitty is glaring daggers at them both. Lardo can’t think of why he’d care, but the game is on again around her, and it slips from her tipsy mind.
Ransom ups the stakes when he’s the subject of a spin by a pretty pre-med, slipping her some very obvious tongue. The circle cheers.
Ransom spins the bottle hard, laughing right up until its neck stops, pointing directly at Holster.
The silence presses pause on everything, until Holster kneels up and says, “Dude, don’t leave me hanging.” He reels Ransom in and really goes for it—hands at the small of Ransom’s back pressing their bodies flush together.
Lardo watches them kiss for what feels like a long time, which is… not so bad, actually. They high-five afterward, and pretty pre-med whoops gleefully, and Lardo realizes that Bitty hasn’t kissed anyone, and that she’d really rather sleep than party anymore.
She slips away during the next round.
—
“Ughhhhhhh,” Lardo tells the kitchen table the next morning.
Bitty’s got coffee on the table and crepes in a pile next to the stove.
“Savory or sweet?” he asks Lardo.
“Ughh,” she says again. It feels like someone replaced her brain with a dying star, pressure imploding and exploding simultaneously, sucking everything into a hangover black hole.
Bitty doesn’t wait for an answer, just plunks a plate down next to where Lardo’s head is resting on the table. She hauls herself up. Her stomach lets out an honest-to-god rumble when she sees the crepe, packed with cheese and bacon and topped with sour cream.
“You are a god among men, littlest Bittle.”
“Shush,” he says back with a proud smile. “Eat your crepe, you’ll feel better.”
Lardo eats while the rest of the Haus wakes up, in various stages of post-party composure. Bitty looks the most put-together, of course. He hums a Taylor Swift song as he floats around the kitchen.
Ransom and Holster appear, haphazardly dressed and squinting like the sun will burn them. They load up plates, huddled close together at the counter, and then troop painfully back up to the attic.
Jack doesn’t look too bad when he appears. “Crepes?” he says incredulously when he sees the kitchen. Bitty’s digging something out of the fridge, and Jack moves to the stove to inspect.
Lardo takes another bite. She watches Bitty turn around and head for Jack.
“Move and I’ll fix you a plate,” Bitty says. He swats playfully at Jack’s butt, and then he freezes.
“Um,” Jack says.
“Oh,” Bitty replies.
“Haha,” Jack says, just like that, like a word. Like a robot somebody taught the word “haha” to.
Bitty flushes a deep scarlet and Lardo flinches for him, but then Jack reaches out. He ruffles Bitty’s hair and smiles, and Bits blushes even deeper, if that’s possible, and melts into it for just a moment. Jack steps out of the way, gesturing for him to go ahead.
It’s a bit like a dance, or like a play on the ice, Lardo thinks, the two of them stepping around each other wordlessly.
It’s painfully cute. It’s—huh.
Lardo goes back to bed.
—
Saturday’s like. Fuck Saturday.
Lardo’s installation is due on Monday, and now she’s got two days, two and a half at most, and she’s got an endless to do list that somehow isn’t magically completing itself.
Whatever, man. Here goes.
The scaffolding of the thing is set up in the backyard, because it takes up space, and because no way in hell was Lardo hauling it all down to the art building. Her professor agreed to come see it on Monday afternoon, in order to grade her. So she’s just gotta be done by then.
Easy.
No problem.
Except the scaffolding is all there is right now, and about a million drawings of the plan from every angle, gridded off and marked to scale. She’s got a pile of supplies in the shed out back, fabric and paint and string and some possibly dodgy wiring supplies for the electrics setup.
Lardo collects the plans and the notebook full of lists, throws a jacket on over her flannel, and tromps out to the backyard to survey her work.
Bitty wanders out at some point, and Lardo thinks he’s going to try to feed her again, but he just says, “Need help?”
“So much,” Lardo tells him, “but—”
“Oh wait, is it, like, cheating if I help you?”
Lardo has to laugh. “Nah, bro. We’re allowed to get assistance on construction, especially for stuff this big. But… don’t you have work to do?”
Bitty shrugs. “I need a break from sitting. And there’s only so many things one person can bake during finals and stay sane. Or avoid going broke buying butter.”
Lardo puts her hand up to his face to check for fever, but Bitty shrugs her off with a laugh. Still, she won’t say no to a helping hand, especially with the clock and available daylight hours running out.
Bitty’s a surprisingly deft hand with fabric—“picked up a few things while figure skating,” is all he says—so Lardo can focus on painting. She lays the plans out on the back porch, anchored with rocks and chair legs. Bitty nods along as she explains. Lardo could swear there’s a manic gleam in his eye as he gets to work.
They’re joined by Chowder, Dex, and Nursey sometime later. Lardo gives them a nod, but Chowder crowds in to see what Bitty’s doing. Pretty soon he’s put all three to work.
Bitty is magic.
“Bitty, you’re magic,” Lardo says.
But all the boy-wrangling magic in the world can’t give them back the daylight that’s already gone. They work until the twilight makes it impossible to see what they’re doing.
Ransom calls them all to dinner from the porch roof. “Holster’s cooking!” he adds as an enticement.
Grilled cheese, Lardo hopes. She’s not disappointed.
—
Most of the Haus is nowhere to be found on Sunday. Lardo spends the whole day in the backyard, painting, rigging string and more fabric and arranging bits and pieces of metal and things.
It’s good. She likes the quiet, sometimes, likes being able to focus on turning the checklist into a picture in her head and the picture into a reality.
She does not like how it’s getting near 4pm and she hasn’t even started on the electrics. They’re key to the whole thing, and if they don’t work, the whole thing will crumble around her.
Whatever, dude. Metaphorically crumble. Her carpentry skills are rock solid.
Her electrician skills are, sadly, not. The sun is well down by the time Lardo gives up trying to get everything rigged. She could have gone the easy way out, strung Christmas lights around, but it wouldn’t have been quite right. The vintage bulbs she collected and repaired are part of that checklist that builds the perfect picture.
The way Lardo sees it—in the dark, in the increasingly freezing backyard—she has three options:
1. She can keep fussing with electrical wires all night.
2. She can take down hours of work and replace it all with cheap strings of lights.
2a. But she’ll have to run to the store and deal with Christmas shoppers and she’s bumping up close to her budget limit here as it is.
3. She can lie on the couch and pretend like her chill is still intact.
—
Shitty finds her there, amid a sea of plans and drawings, playing Candy Crush Soda like her whole grade doesn’t hang in the balance.
Only the kind-of-vicious way she taps at her phone screen belies the fact that there’s something wrong.
“What’s wrong?” Shitty asks immediately. He scoops the drawings from around her and throws himself on the couch next to her.
“Sparks,” she says.
Shitty nods his head gravely, like that made any sense at all. “Cool if I look at these?”
Lardo shrugs. She moves a fish to free a bear on her phone. It’s her last move. 21:04 until her hearts recharge, the countdown clock tells her.
Shitty turns a page over, then over again. “So what’s wrong?” he says.
Lardo flips the page back over for him. “Electrics. Lights. I can’t get them to work.”
“What are you going to do?”
Lardo reaches behind her, rifles around in the couch until she comes up the tv remote.
“Watch Netflix,” she answers.
“Cool,” Shitty says.
They turn on a documentary about the L.A. Raiders. Shitty flings an arm across the back of the couch, and even though Lardo knows they’ll get chirped if anyone sees them, she leans into his warmth.
Shitty’s flow tickles her face a bit as she leans her head onto his shoulder.
She’s asleep before she realizes it.
—
Lardo wakes up to an empty living room. She’s wrapped in the blanket from Shitty’s bed—they banned communal blankets in the living room after the (Formerly) Annual Drake Singalong Incident of 2013—but Shitty himself is nowhere in sight.
Sitting up takes a minute, Lardo rubbing her eyes at the weird light halo that’s reflecting from the tv off the windows to the backyard at a bizarre angle. She yawns and stretches out the crick in her back.
Rubbing her eyes didn’t work. The light is still there, weirdly yellow, weirdly bright.
Lardo stands and squints and realizes that it’s not a reflection. The backyard is lit up to near daylight levels with sodium-yellow worklights.
She wraps Shitty’s blanket tighter around her and opens the back door.
“Bro?” she calls into the yard.
Something crashes from inside Lardo’s installation. Shitty yelps and then calls out, “Gimme a sec.”
“Bro, what are you doing?” Lardo asks. There’s no answer but another crash. Lardo runs a hand through her sleep-rumpled hair.
Shitty emerges with a screwdriver in his mouth. “Hang on,” he says around it. He follows a cord to a worklight, then clicks a power strip with more cords snaking out of it. The lights blink out. The yard goes pitch black.
It must be later than Lardo thought. It’s cold, and she tugs the blanket even tighter.
“How long did I sleep?” Lardo asks as Shitty approaches. Her eyes are adjusting to the dark. She sees him shrug.
“A couple of hours? I don’t know, I’ve been out here…” He trails off with a gesture, hand sweeping to encompass the yard, the installation, the snaking path of cords.
“What were you doing?”
“You left all the plans out, so I…” The gesturing hand now reaches out, hovers around the small of Lardo’s back. “Here, let me just show you.”
Shitty guides her carefully through the yard, around the wires, and into the installation through the curtain opening Bitty rigged up yesterday.
“Do you—I don’t actually know where you’re supposed to stand,” he says.
“It doesn’t matter,” Lardo answers. “It works from anywhere. Or it would, if it worked.”
“Then, just. Wait a second.” He ducks back out of the curtain.
Lardo sighs a little. She sits on the makeshift pallet flooring, tucking the tails of the blanket around her.
Shitty comes back with another cord in his hand. He sits down next to her. “Ready?”
If he could see her in the darkness, she’d roll her eyes. “Yeah, man, quit with the buildup.”
“It’s a big moment!”
“Is it?”
“Yeah, bro, it is. You did all this work.”
“I did, and I already know what it looks like,” she tells him.
“Nah. Not like this. This is special. Savor the moment.”
“Okay, okay.” She wiggles a bit, makes a show of getting comfortable. “I’m ready to savor.”
“Good, cool, okay, here goes,” Shitty says. He lifts the cord he’s holding.
Lardo hears a click, and then.
“’Swawesome,” she breathes.
It’s like being in a video game, in a painting and a sculpture and a diorama all at once. The bulbs twinkle perfectly—Shitty obviously got them to work, and she doesn’t know how, but it’s amazing.
It’s exactly what she pictured in her head.
She’s repurposed the felt stars she’d used in one of her last projects, spraypainting them over as both as both stencils and drippy-colored dangly mobile pieces. The fabric that shapes the room—okay, more like a tent, really—is splattered in blues and purples and deep, deep greens, and the lightbulbs both hang from the ceiling and poke through holes cut in the walls.
It’s a night sky, but Lardo’s made her own constellations. Like being in a field with nothing to obstruct your view of the patterns and the darkness and the twinkling starlight.
“This is boss level,” he says reverently. “But they’re—I don’t recognize them.”
Lardo smiles a tiny smile. “I made them up.”
“Tell me?”
She points to the brightest bulb, fixed to the ceiling above them. “That’s the boat star,” she explains. “It guides travelers over water.” She points to the wall to their left. “That’s the huntress. And next to her is the rabbit hutch, um, chỗ ở minor.” Lardo shrugs. “It’s a whole thing.”
“Is that one—is he riding a horse?”
“Yeah, um. That’s the knight. See his sword?” Lardo feels her face heat a bit. Is it bright enough to see her blush? She doesn’t know. She doesn’t look over at Shitty, doesn’t want to risk it.
He just wraps an arm around her. “Bro, this is amazing work,” he says.
Lardo sinks into his warmth, the way she always wants to. “Thank you,” she says, and can’t even list the ways she means it.
They’re quiet for a long moment, together in the muted light of the homemade stars, until finally Lardo can’t stifle a massive yawn.
“Okay,” Shitty says. “Time for bed. It’s way too cold to fall asleep out here.”
Lardo frowns. “I have your blanket.”
“S’okay,” he shrugs. “Worse comes to worse, I’ll crawl in with Jack.”
“Not me?” Lardo blurts.
Shitty’s eyes go wide. “Um. I mean. If you—uh.” He looks well and truly flustered.
“C’mon,” she says. They’re huddled out here like a secret just between the two of them, and it makes her feel bold. “C’mon,” she says again. “I want you to.” She reaches out from the cocoon of the blanket and takes Shitty’s hand, tugs him up to standing.
“I’ll even let you be little spoon,” she tells him with a laugh.