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Despite what Holster said to Dex when he was complaining about being kicked off the couch, Lardo is not watching Star Trek with Shitty.
The TV is on, yes, and Kirk is doing something emotion-fueled and shirtless. And Lardo’s sprawled out on the couch next to Shitty. Not on him, because there are certain drawbacks to nudity that even Shitty has to admit.
(“Woah, get the spiky hair away from the squishy bits!”
“I usually make ‘em buy be dinner first, Shits. And seriously? ‘Squishy bits?’”)
The thing is, it’s impossible to actually pay attention to something when Shitty’s spouting social commentary and oddball factoids two feet over her head. It’s more of listening to the way Shitty’s voice slides between excitement and sarcasm while Kirk and Spock and the rest of them angst over Technicolor aliens in the background.
It’s this very reason that led to the Great Duct Tape Incident of Twenty-Twelve, but Lardo’s seen all this before, with her Dad on the nights Mom worked so late Lardo thought she’d never come home, and she likes the sound of Shitty’s voice, besides. Also she didn’t know that thing about the transporter beam being aluminum powder. Maybe she’ll use that in a piece.
She can make the title obscurely nerdy. Like about Bones’ hair trimmer or something. Shitty’d like that.
The door opens, letting in a gust of wind that rattles the pictures Bitty’s hung in the entryway. It’s got to be Jack. He’s the only one that opens the door slowly, like a normal human.
“Shits, have you even moved since I left this morning? Hey, Lardo,” Jack says, when Lardo raises her hand to wave at him. “Is Bittle—oh!” His voice goes up, like, an entire octave, and he turns a sharp ninety degrees into the kitchen without even looking at Shitty’s half-hearted thumb-jerk.
Shitty lowers his head and fixes Lardo with The Look. The my-teammates-totally-want-to-bang-and-you’re-the-only-one-I-can-talk-to-about-it look. Lardo wiggles deeper into the couch cushions and does her best bad impression of a sympathetic listener.
“I can’t stand this,” he says, tilting his head in the direction of the kitchen. “Lardo. Can you just smush their faces together or something?”
“I’ve got a—”
“—strict no-meddling policy in the possible homoromantic interactions of this team,” Shitty finishes, and it’s a testament to how much time they spend together that she’s said “homoromantic” enough times for him to imitate her. “But this is desperate, Lar. I think it’s actually making me sick.”
In the kitchen, Bitty bursts out laughing. There’s a sound that may or may not be somebody hitting somebody else with a dishrag. Shitty uses The Look again. Holds it. Lets his left eye twitch dramatically.
“Hmmm…nope.” She toasts him with the empty beer bottle she’s been balancing on her stomach. “I told you when you got on me about Rans and Holster, dude. They’re gonna deny it even more if I point it out to them.”
“Rans and Holster are like. A five. On the scale of unresolved-desire-for-sucking-face. Hey,” he says when Lardo snorts, “I’m tellin’ you, bros who have hit No-Homo Nirvana don’t spend that much time trying to drunkenly convince me how to proposition their best friend in a threesome.”
“Shits, that was one time.”
“Which is more than not-digging-each-other dudes do! But anyway. Jack and Bitty are an eleven. No. A nineteen.”
“Yo, I know Jack and Bits are bad, but if R&H are a five there’s no way they’re up to a nineteen.”
“Fine. FINE.” Shitty throws his hands up in the air. “How would you rate our repression-stunted non-couples-of-the-year? Who’s got the most—” he drops his voice down, so low he’s growling, and waggles his eyebrows “—unresolved sexual tension?”
And there it is, like the perfect place to score sculpted iron, like just the right color purple on her oils brush. Lardo’s ab muscles clench, and the beer bottle wobbles, but she made a promise to herself at the beginning of the semester, and well. Fuck it. She clears her throat. “Um. We do?”
Shitty doesn’t spit out his beer. Only frogs are allowed to spit good beer on the Haus rug, and this is good beer, because Shitty brought it up for her. Which he always does, and which they never talk about. Shitty does, however, swallow very abruptly and take a few moments to figure out how to breathe.
“I guess we do, huh,” he says, once his lungs are working again. Lardo lies back down, the top of her hair poking into his thigh. After a few minutes Shitty drops his hand down to cup the back of her head, scratches a little at the base of her neck—like she’s a cat, goddammit, but he knows that it relaxes her, and she starts pointing out the holes in Shitty’s the-Enterprise-is-sentient theory, and that’s that.
It probably should be awkward, but neither she nor Shitty have much patience for that, so it isn’t. She just walks up behind Shitty the next time she sees him and slips her hand into his, and he squeezes back without pausing his gesticulations for whatever he’s explaining to Chowder. Chowder doesn’t react to it, but Bitty sure does, when they walk into practice still holding hands. He covers his mouth and honest-to-god squeals, and all the boys go wild.
Between Holster thumping her on the back and Jack elbowing Shitty in the gut and Rans screaming and the frogs getting trampled and Bitty hopping around like a delighted rabbit, they don’t stay holding hands for long. Then Coach Hall comes over to yell at them to get changed, and they don’t even get to do their handshake, which blows. She thought up a new way to do the upside-down bit.
(“Yo but wait, can Lardo stay now?”
“Fuck off, Holster.”
“It’s not like she’s never seen Shitty naked before.”
“Fuck OFF, Jack.”
“Holster, if you think I want to see your wrinkled-up old man dick then you—”
“MISS LARISSA.”
“Right, sorry, leaving, Coach.”)
Lardo double-times it out of there and is immediately accosted by Coach Murray, and the walk to the bleachers is spent juggling receipts and projected spending charts and trying to get him to chill long enough for her to dig her rink jacket out from under the uniform order sheets in her bag.
(She wonders, fifteen minutes before the end of practice, if the soft-eyed looks Bitty keeps shooting her have anything to do with the fact that the jacket is Shitty’s. Whatever, she stole it from him months ago, because he’s got like five and she was too lazy to walk back for her own, and she’s been wearing it on and off since then so Bitty really has nothing to stare at.)
It’s completely deserted in the locker room when she goes back. She’s got a list of fundraiser notes for them, and some shit from the coaches about behaving responsibly—whatever Rans and Holster have done now, she doesn’t want to know—and they know better than to leave before she sees them, so she’s confused and not a little pissed off when Shitty comes out of the bathroom. Alone. Oh. Those smug little fuckers.
“…yeah,” Shitty says, when he sees her looking pointedly around the empty room. “The guys kind of, ah, left. They’re really happy about this.” He waggles a finger between the two of them. Tugs at the corner of his mustache.
But if it wasn’t awkward before Lardo sure as hell isn’t going to let it be now, so she sets her clipboard down on one of the benches and marches up to him. “So,” she says, and her hands are on her hips without her remembering putting them there, “Are we gonna make out or what?”
Shitty grins at her and bends down (and down—stupid short genetics) and then that, yeah, that’s pretty amazing. Turns out Shitty likes biting, which is fine because she is 150% into biting, and they end up with Shitty slumped against the wall and Lardo hanging from his neck. As far as first make-outs go, nice. She can’t stop smiling when they break away. Shitty looks dazed.
There’s nothing else to do but kick him in the shins. Shitty goes down with a “FUCK” that rings off the tiled walls, and Lardo’s so busy laughing her ass off that she doesn’t see him snake a leg out to trip her until it’s too late.
“Lardo, you fucker.”
“Don’t you dare try to kiss me when we’re on the locker room floor, that’s nasty.”
“Your face is nasty.”
“That’s not what your mom thought last night!”
And they’re wrestling and they’re laughing and Lardo thinks, I guess I’m in love with this asshole, and maybe it’s just a little bit perfect.