Chapter Text
Whenever anyone asked Shitty or Lardo when they started dating they would usually just laugh. Actually if anyone asked them if they were dating they would usually just laugh. They had always been the best of friends, that much was clear, the other parts had come later… the problem was, it hadn’t all happened at once. One day the year before Bitty arrived, they had been sitting around on the Haus roof smoking and talking like always. Neither one of them knew how they ended up kissing, they just sort of did. That’s how their whole relationship had played out, neither of them really knew what they were doing, and neither of them talked about it, it just happened. It was okay, it worked for them, they always presented a united front anyway, it was fine. Lardo always told herself that it was fine.
The only thing was Shitty’s graduation was approaching all too quickly and they still weren’t talking about it. Lardo didn’t know what to do. Every time she thought she could say something Shitty would turn to her with those wide eyes so bright and positive and full of light and excitement about whatever the topic of the day was, and she couldn’t bring herself to have a conversation that might mean losing that. Shitty never seemed to take anything seriously. Sure he cared deeply about a ton of things, social justice, equality, Jack Laurent Zimmermann, the team, but he still seemed… blaise about everything. He cared, but in the way one cared about things that didn’t truly affect them, or so it seemed. She had seen it before, when shit got too serious around Shitty, like his family, he ran. Lardo was terrified of trying to talk and making him run. She couldn’t imagine losing Shitty. She was pretty sure it would destroy her. It had been bad enough when she had been studying in Kenya and they could only see each other through Skype. She couldn’t bear the thought that Shitty might just graduate and leave without them ever figuring themselves out. What if he just left and that was it for them? They didn’t talk anymore? It was the worst thing she could imagine.
Lardo had always prided herself on her independence, her self-reliance. She didn’t need people, she liked them sure, she always got along with people, had a lot of friends, but she would always been calm about it all. She loved her team, she would never try to deny it. She loved the guys and they loved her. Still she wouldn’t let losing any of them break her. They were just the people that she loved in this moment of her life. She had learned, and learned early, that most people in life were temporary. Her friends from middle school had abandoned her in high-school, her friends from high-school had abandoned her after a few years or simply stopped really talking to her afterwards. She didn’t mind. She lived in whatever time she was in, and just went with the flow, never getting stuck on a certain place or group of people, no matter how much she loved them. That was her practice, her principles for dealing with life, and it had served her well for a long time, until B. Shitty Knight.
Lardo couldn’t remember how it happened, how he snuck past all of her walls and lodged himself in her heart, but all of a sudden she had this boy who she couldn’t see as temporary, who it would break her to lose. Part of her hated it, hated that bit of weakness that he had forced into her, hated the fact that suddenly she couldn’t be entirely independent but had to rely on him to be there, had to trust him to stay (she never trusted anyone to stay in her life). Still she couldn’t ever seem to bring herself to hate or resent him for it. He was just… Shitty. Larrissa Duan had come to the conclusion that she was biologically incapable of hating Shitty Knight. Instead she loved him in a way that terrified her bone deep.
Lardo resolved to herself that she wouldn’t demand a more clear cut definition of their relationship. She wouldn’t risk the chance that Shitty might flip and they’d lose the time that they had left. No. She would act as she always acted, as if nothing was going to change at the end of the year. Besides, it wasn’t like Shitty brought it up either. They were busy dealing with the rest of their insane team anyway. Between Jack and Bitty pining over each other, Dex and Nursey pining over each other, and Ransom and Holster pining over each other while also raising their adorable daughter together, she and Shitty had a lot of angst to deal with in their Haus.